24.10.2024
Experts from Sudan are collaborating with scholars from Germany to research some 10,000 photographs and films Leni Riefenstahl made in the Nuba Mountains.
The Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) was given filmmaker and photographer Leni Riefenstahl’s (1902–2003) estate. The holdings were distributed to the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin State Library), the Sammlung Fotografie der Kunstbibliothek (Art Library Collection of Photography) and the Ethnologisches Museum (Ethnological Museum), while the cinematic work, technical equipment and textiles went to the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek (SDK).
The focus of cataloguing the collection was initially on Riefenstahl’s Nuba photographs, which were taken in southern Sudan in the 1960s and 1970s. Her photographs sparked worldwide controversy at the time. How do the Nuba people view these photographs today and how will they be dealt with in the future?
The images have been researched and contextualised under the title Deutsch-Sudanesische kollaborative Erschließung und Präsentation des Nuba-Werks von Leni Riefenstahl (German-Sudanese Collaborative Cataloguing and Presentation of Leni Riefenstahl’s Nuba Works). For the first time it has been possible to shift the focus to the perspectives of the Nuba peoples depicted in Riefenstahl’s images. The project has also sought to provide international accessibility and to preserve, archive and digitally catalogue Riefenstahl’s Nuba and African collections.
On 25 and 26 October 2024, an international symposium entitled “Collaboration and Digital Handover: Discussing the Project ‘Nuba Images by Leni Riefenstahl’” was held at the Kulturforum in Berlin, with the goal of discussing the reception of the photographs and the perspectives of the Nuba. The event concluded with the handover of the digitised photographs to the Pan-Nuba Council.