Sarah Jilani

They didn't know...

whether Ilse, poor Ingrid Bergman, was going to go off with Laszlo or Rick.

It was very much on the fly and there was a lot of anxiety.

I was not interested in politics, not a little bit.

Only how I can make it that it is not stupid, that it is a little more interesting.

That was my desire.

That's Leni Riefenstahl in one of several interviews with the BBC.

Described as Hitler's favourite filmmaker, to some she was an artistic genius.

To many others, like film director Owen Leiser, who fled Hitler's Germany as a teenager, she was an apologist and promoter of the Nazi regime.

The young Riefenstahl had been a dancer, but after an injury she turned to films, first starring in them and then, in 1932, directing her own feature, The Blue Light.

Among her fans was a rising figure in German politics, Adolf Hitler.

He commissioned her to make a film of his rally in Nuremberg, an annual showcase for the Nazi party, attended by hundreds of thousands.

I get the order from Hitler to do the picture.

And every artist in Germany must do in this time what to get order.

But I was independent.

I was always independent.

And this independence seems to have caused problems with one of Hitler's closest allies, Joseph Goebbels.

According to Riefenstahl, the propaganda minister interfered in her filming of the 1933 rally and she went straight to the top to complain.

I was coming to Hitler and he was very kind and friendly and we go in a little room, Dr Goebbels, Hitler and I. And Hitler asked me what happened.

And so I told Hitler...