Leni Riefenstahl was one of the most important directors of the 20th century. She pioneered several filmmaking techniques and forever influenced how sports and action are filmed on camera. But she was also a Nazi. Or was she? After the war, Riefenstahl spent the rest of her very long life defending her work and denying any involvement with the Nazi Party...sometimes in the face of very real evidence to refute her claims. So what's the truth? Listen to this episode to hear the full story.

Warning: this episode talks about the Holocaust, bigotry, and stigmatization of mental illness.

This episode was re-recorded for this release. The original version aired on Grab Bag Collab in May 2025. Stephanie Weber researched, wrote, recorded, and edited the episode. Brock Alter did all of the artwork. Follow us on social media to see clips and stills from the films discussed in this episode.

SOURCES:

Connolly, Kate. Gypsies’ Fate Haunts Film Muse of Hitler. August 18, 2002. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/aug/18/artsandhumanities.germany

Connolly, Kate. “Film suggests Nazis’ lead propagandist had role in 1939 massacre.” The Guardian. August 28, 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/aug/28/film-suggests-nazis-propagandist-leni-riefenstahl-had-role-in-1939-massacre

“Just What Did Leni Riefenstahl’s Lens See?” New York Times. March 13, 1994. Accessed via https://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/maslin.html on May 1, 2025.

Indiana, Gary. “Leni Riefenstahl.” Art Forum. https://www.artforum.com/columns/leni-riefenstahl-168029/

Muller, Ray. The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl. (1993)

Prose, Francine. “Leni Riefenstahl: On a Nazi Filmmaker”. The Yale Review. October 1, 2018. https://yalereview.org/article/leni-riefenstahl

Riefenstahl, Leni. “The Blue Light”. (1932). 

Riefenstahl, Leni. “Olympia Part One: The Festival of Nationals” (1938).

Riefenstahl, Leni. “Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty” (1938). 

Veiel, Andres. Riefenstahl. (2024)

Zajc, Melita. A cruel game by Hitler’s Favourite Filmmaker Exposed. Modern Times Review. February 20, 2022. https://www.moderntimes.review/a-cruel-game-by-hitlers-favourite-filmmaker-exposed/

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"She's so f***ing mean," Quentin Tarantino once said of film critic Pauline Kael. Kael was known for brutally harsh film reviews that could make or break a movie. People want to dismiss critics for "not knowing anything", but Kael knew a lot - and her knowledge was valuable to the industry. Her ability to spot up-and-coming talent in the 60s and 70s helped New American Cinema flourish. Find out about her life as we read her wildest reviews. Who could ever say something mean about The Sound of Music? Pauline Kael!

This episode originally aired with Grab Bag Collab on their Patreon. Stephanie Weber is the host, creator, researcher, and writer of Directora. Amanda Rossman mixed this episode. Brock Alter made the artwork. Follow Directora on Instagram and TikTok. E-mail questions, suggestions, and anything else to [email protected]

Sources for this episode:

Barsanti, Chris. “When Film Mattered: Pauline Kael’s Age of Movies.” October 27, 2011. https://themillions.com/2011/10/when-film-mattered-pauline-kaels-the-age-of-movies.html

Brody, Richard. “What Pauline Kael Failed to See About Young Film Lovers”. April 8, 2025. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/what-pauline-kael-failed-to-see-about-young-film-lovers

Cwik, Greg. “The Critic as Artful Gadfly”. Pop Matters. November 14, 2012. https://www.popmatters.com/165416-the-critic-as-artful-gadfly-pauline-kael-2495797841.html

Garver, Rob. What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael. (2018).

Hellerman, Jason. “The Controversy Behind ‘Citizen Kane’, ‘Mank’, and Pauline Kael”. December 2, 2020. https://nofilmschool.com/citizen-kane-pauline-kael

Jones, Emma. “It Was Really Wrong: How Last Tango in Paris’ Infamous Explicit Scene Undid Its Female Star.” BBC News. April 3, 2025.  https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250402-maria-schneider-how-last-tango-in-pariss-infamous-explicit-scene-undid-its-female-star

Kael, Pauline. “Circles and Squares.” JSTOR.org https://www.jstor.org/stable/1210726

Kael, Pauline. “Bonnie and Clyde.” The New Yorker. October 13, 1967. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1967/10/21/bonnie-and-clyde

Linfield, Susie. “The Perils of Pauline” LA Times. Sept. 29, 2002. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-sep-29-bk-linfield29-story.html

Potton, Ed. “She’s So Mean - The Critic Everyone Loved to Hate”. The Times. March 17, 2023. https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/tarantino-described-her-film-reviews-as-the-greatest-shit-ever-she-s-just-being-so-f-ing-mean-nnkt6056r

Russell, Calum. “Pauline Kael Reviews Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction” Far Out Magazine. March 16 2013. https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/pauline-kael-reviews-quentin-tarantinos-pulp-fiction/

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When I was planning episodes, a friend suggested that I talk about lavender marriages. Lavender marriages were essentially fake Hollywood marriages set up by studios, agents, or the actors themselves to hide a star’s sexuality or clean up their image. I know that lavender marriages and queerness in early Hollywood are really salacious and fun to talk about, but I couldn’t immediately figure out how to casually bring up the subject. And then I remembered Alla Nazimova and, folks, we've got ourselves a great episode on a queer producer, director, and actress who was said to be one of the best actresses of her day. Let’s talk about Alla Nazimova and her groundbreaking silent film with an allegedly all-gay cast, Salome. Happy Pride!

“Alla Nazimova - AFI Catalogue Spotlight”. June 1, 2023. https://www.afi.com/news/alla-nazimova-afi-catalog-spotlight/

“Alla Nazimova”. IMDB. Accessed on May 16, 2024. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0623417/

Anger, Kenneth. Hollywood Babylon. Dell Publishing, 1975.

Longworth, Karina. “Rudolph Valentino (Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon). January 29, 2019. https://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/2019/1/29/hollywoodbabylon

Pacheco, Diego Pineda. “Critically Acclaimed Films that Roger Ebert Disliked”. Collider. April 25, 2024. 

https://collider.com/roger-ebert-worst-acclaimed-movies/

Reise. “The 10 Most Sexually Prolific Lesbians and Bisexuals in Old Hollywood.” Astro Straddle. July 7, 2016. https://www.autostraddle.com/10-old-hollywood-stars-who-enjoyed-scissoring-343227/

Shokin, Samantha. The Founding Mother of Sapphic Hollywood. Tablet Mag. June 1, 2022. 

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/alla-nazimova-sapphic-hollywood

Turnbull, Martin. “Salome”. JSTOR. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/salome.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/02/mercedes-de-acosta-the-poet-who-had-affairs-with-the-20th-centurys-most-famous-women

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Season one of Directora is all about foundations. We've talked about the first female director ever, and we talked about Hollywood's first successful female director. Today, we ask the question: who was the first Black female filmmaker? 

Well, this is actually a difficult question to answer. There is no one answer. There are a couple of early contenders, but the answer also depends on what you’re asking. In this episode, we'll talk about several Black female pioneers in film, from Madame Welcome to Tressie Souders to Eloyce King Patrick Gist to Zora Neale Hurston to Jessie Maple, and more!

This episode originally aired with Grab Bag Collab. Thank you to Amanda Rossman, Daisy Eagan, and Amber Hunt. Thank you to Brock Alter for sound help and podcast artwork. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok to see clips and stills from the topics talked about in this episode.

Sources used for this episode:

Abbot, Robert. S. “Among the Movies,” Chicago Defender, 20 November 1915, p. 5. 

Baker, Christina N. Black Women Directors. Rutgers University Press, 2022. 

Bobo, Jaqueline. Black Women Film & Video Artists. AFI Film Readers. Routledge, 1998. 

The Billboard, NY Digital Library, 31 Dec. 1921, p. 43. www.fultonhistory.com/newspaper

Black Film Archive - 1920s. https://blackfilmarchive.com/1920-s

“I Invest in Myself and I Make My Films: Jessie Maple on Breaking Boundaries in Filmmaking”. NU Block Museum. February 6, 2020. 

https://nublockmuseum.blog/2020/02/06/i-invest-in-myself-and-i-make-my-films-jessie-maple-on-breaking-boundaries-and-filmmaking-audio/

Jackson, Ashwanta. “Black Camerawoman Jessie Maple’s Fight to Join a Union”. JSTOR Daily. May 13, 2021. https://daily.jstor.org/black-camerawoman-jessie-maples-fight-to-join-a-union/

Knuppel, Jennie. “The First Black Woman to Write and Produce and Act in Her Own Film”. Saturday Evening Post. February 29, 2024. https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2024/02/the-first-black-woman-to-write-produce-and-act-in-her-own-film/

Morgan, Kyna; Aimee Dixon. "African-American Women in the Silent Film Industry." In Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta, eds. Women Film Pioneers Project. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2013.  https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-vt0f-1758

Stratton, L.E. “How White Women’s Patronage of Black Artists Exposed Racial Fault Lines.” Lit Hub. June 13, 2024. https://lithub.com/how-white-womens-patronage-of-black-artists-exposed-racial-fault-lines/

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They say sex sells, but can sex also sell feminist ideas? That's what director Stephanie Rothman did in the 60s and 70s. European movies and groovy new ideas inspired the bold director to make low-budget movies with big impacts. She began working for the great B-movie director Roger Corman, who trusted her to direct her first independent films.

She directed The Student Nurses, launching a wave of "sexy nurse" movies in the 70s. However, it was so much more than a sexploitation film playing at drive-in movies to teen boys. The film followed its young female protagonists through a variety of dramas that touched on issues that were affecting real women in the outside world. From pregnancy to addiction to revolution, The Student Nurses was about a lot more than sex. Don't get me wrong - there IS sex in the movie, but there's more than that.

Rothman cleverly "snuck" feminist ideas into raunchy movies. She also infused her sexy vampire film, The Velvet Vampire, with plenty of dreamy visuals that inspired later horror films such as The Love Witch. Her films touched on politics, sex, and love, and even included a sex-work film starring a young Cassandra Peterson (that's Elvira!). She did all of this while working within the exploitation genre, simply because it was the only avenue that she was offered. As a result, she fought against notions that her films were silly genre movies or filth. Rothman is still disregarded in feminist film studies for that reason. Let's change that! It's time to recognize Rothman's work as valuable for feminist filmmaking and female directors as a whole.

Thank you for listening! This episode was originally published with Grab Bag Collab. Special thanks to them! Thanks to Brock Alter for the podcast art and tech help. Directora is researched, written, edited, and hosted by Stephanie Weber.

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Lois Weber was a powerhouse director in her day. She wrote and directed blockbuster films. She experimented with split-screen storytelling, wrote boundary-pushing material, and even directed Hollywood's first nude scene. She was the first female studio head. She had lucrative contracts with major studios like Universal. At one point in the 1910s, her movies made more money than Cecil B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith. In fact, DeMille said she was his favorite director. So why haven't you heard of her? Why didn't her career thrive like her male contemporaries'? There are a few really good - and surprising - reasons for that, which we will talk about in this episode.

Grab Bag Collab originally launched this episode. Thank you to them and thank you to Brock Alter for the podcast art. Stephanie Weber is the host, writer, researcher, creator, and owner of Directora. Thank you so much for listening!

Please note that there is a microphone update after the first 8 episodes and a general skill increase, so the sound really improves in a few episodes. Stick with it! Follow us on Instagram and TikTok for clips of the movies discussed in these episodes and news about all things women in film.

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What is Directora? Listen to this short trailer that talks about what the podcast is, who it is for, and what's happening next. This is a podcast that celebrates the history and contributions of women in film. We've had two seasons and are moving networks to a free feed, so this is about where we've been and where we're headed. Tune in every Wednesday to hear a new episode of Directora.

Thank you to Grab Bag Collab for launching this podcast's first two seasons.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On the very first episode of Directora, host and creator Stephanie Weber introduces herself and the premise of the entire podcast. This podcast celebrates the history of women in film, so it is only fitting that we start with the very beginning of the film industry and the woman believed to be the first female filmmaker in the world.

Her name was Alice Guy-Blaché, and she went from being an employee at a camera company in France to the writer, director, and producer of over 1,000 films. Yes, you read that right! She even made films in America in the early 1900s, when her film company set up a second location in the budding East Coast film industry in the United States. Her breakthroughs include the first narrative films, feminist satires, and films featuring the first all-Black casts. This is the astounding story of Alice Guy-Blaché, her contributions to cinema as a whole, and what happened to her towards the end of her life. While many of her films are lost to time, there are several that remain. Please follow us on Instagram (directora_podcast) and TikTok (directorapodcast) to see clips of her films as well as promotional posters and still images.

Welcome to Directora! I'm so happy you're here.

Special thanks to friends Joel Walkowski, John Campogna, Jeff LaPenna, Veronica Hetschinof, Marissa Hansen, Emily Roscoe Jones, Brock Alter, and Alex Van Beek for answering my questions up top. Thank you to Daisy Eagan for editing my script and to Amanda Rossman for the final sound mix. Special thanks to Brock Alter for the art and tech help. It took a village to make this first episode of Directora!

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