Salon.com > Ashley Fantz

Happy birthday, Leni Riefenstahl

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 19:00:00 +0000

Leni Riefenstahl celebrated her 100th birthday on Aug. 22. The milestone earned a few headlines as Hitler's favorite filmmaker and the last living member of the Führer's inner circle welcomed journalists from the world press to her Munich home and Riefenstahl Produktion film studio. Riefenstahl was spirited and sharp, her white hair curling crazily, her eyebrows delicately penciled, her lips painted as red as the flag of the Third Reich.

If reporters, however, were expecting a candid interview with the woman most famous for making propaganda films such as "Triumph of the Will," they were disappointed. Although Riefenstahl marveled playfully about becoming a centenarian, she kept the discussion focused on her latest film, "Impressionen Unter Wasser" ("Impressions Under Water"), released in April in Germany. The silent film is a series of shorts of tranquil oceanic scenes. Riefenstahl became fascinated with sea life in her 70s, when she said she was 20 years younger in order to get certified as a scuba diver.

Yesterday’s terrorist, today’s peacemaker

Tue, 17 Sep 2002 19:27:00 +0000

Joyous machine-gun fire filled the air of Skopje and young people swarmed into the streets after voters in Macedonia threw out the ruling party and elected a multiethnic coalition government in parliamentary elections held Sunday. Viewing the government as corrupt and economically incompetent, and mistrusting its ability to shepherd the nation to reconciliation after a violent guerrilla campaign by ethnic Albanians last year, Macedonians voted into power two coalition parties -- one of them headed by Ali Ahmeti, the military leader who led last year's uprising and is still denounced by many Macedonians as a terrorist.

Observers and Macedonians alike hailed the elections for the 120-seat parliament, the fourth held since Macedonia broke away from Yugoslavia in 1991, as largely free and fair, saying they showed that the young Balkan state was taking great strides toward democracy. But tensions in this impoverished, mountainous state remained high: Sporadic violence marred the election, and even though the government and the Albanian rebels, under pressure from the European Union, reached agreement last year on a peace deal that gave the Albanians more civil rights and access to government jobs, extremists on both sides pose a threat to peace.

Herr Schroeder can’t catch a break

Mon, 26 Aug 2002 23:37:00 +0000

Facing the highest rates of unemployment in three years, German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder recruited longtime friend Peter Hartz, Volkswagen's personnel manager, to chair a committee that would look for solutions. That was in February. Ten days ago, the two men appeared before an invitation-only crowd of 700 at the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, bearing the result of that labor.

It was a bound report, 5 inches thick, and Hartz waved it proudly before the audience. "This means 2 million jobs over the next three years -- starting now!" he announced.

Schroeder's eyes brightened underneath his unruly eyebrows and a half-smile crept over his face.

Of course, the chancellor had every reason to be happy about Hartz's promise. Nearly 4 million Germans -- 10 percent of the workforce -- are jobless. Most of them live in the east, an influential voting bloc Schroeder has been struggling to woo with the Sept. 22 national elections a month away. It was Schroeder who said in 1998 -- when unemployment was only slightly worse -- that he didn't deserve to be reelected if he didn't bring more jobs to Germany. There's no doubt that the sore subject is the reason Bavarian prime minister Edmund Stoiber, whose constituents are enjoying a high-tech boom and one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, has consistently walloped the chancellor by 7 points in the polls.

The jail from hell

Tue, 23 Jan 2001 22:05:00 +0000

The day after Thanksgiving, a Memphis, Tenn., resident named Joseph Liberto got into a fight with his wife. According to her, he chased her through the house with a knife. She called the police, who arrived at the couple's upper-middle-class home and arrested Liberto. (Memphis Police Department policy is to arrest suspects at the scene of a domestic violence call when weapons are involved.) Liberto had calmed down by that time, and the police did not handcuff him. They let him fetch a jacket and his antidepressant medication, which he takes four times a day. It was merely a precaution, Liberto assumed: His attorney, a prominent city litigator, would have him out of the Shelby County Jail in a matter of hours.

Liberto, who is the father of three teenage girls and had never before been arrested, was dropped off at the jail's intake area. It was a cramped, filthy space crowded with hundreds of inmates waiting to be classified, its floor covered in feces, urine and food. Liberto found himself sandwiched between two men, one who said he'd been arrested for beating and raping a 14-year-old girl, the other for shooting someone. Twice, according to Liberto, he asked guards for his medication: They cursed at him and told him to sit down and shut up. After hours, guards showed him what he thought were his bonding papers. Instead they were documents that would officially admit him into a cell within the jail. "I hadn't been able to call my lawyer," he says. "I knew I was in a bad place. I was really scared at that point."

Fatal mistake

Thu, 19 Oct 2000 08:00:00 +0000

John Adams had just settled in to watch a little TV one night earlier this month.

It was a new routine for the 64-year-old man. He'd spent more than 30 years coming home exhausted from working shifts at the local rubber plant. He told a friend that his arthritis was hurting him that day, but he wasn't really the complaining type. Life was beginning to slow down for a change.

With his retirement savings, he and his 61-year-old wife, Loraine, had just fulfilled a lifelong dream of buying a new Cadillac and a double-wide trailer. That night, with his cane leaning against the side of his tan recliner, Adams was content to just flip through the channels and maybe fall asleep.

But outside their home on a sleepy, dead-end street stood seven armed police officers. Some wore riot gear and they were armed with clear shields and helmets. Leading the pack at the front door were officers Kyle Shedran, 25, and Greg Day, 24.

For weeks, they and other members of the narcotics unit of the Lebanon Police Department had eyed this house -- one of only two on Joseph Street, a short pathway one might overlook driving through nearby streets. They thought they had seen a drug dealer frequent the place. They had a warrant to search the house and authorization to react if they encountered resistance.

Doubt on death row

Thu, 14 Sep 2000 08:00:00 +0000

Philip Workman seemed to know.

Last week the Tennessee death row inmate picked up a pay phone at Nashville's Riverbend Maximum Security Prison and dialed his defense attorneys of nearly a decade. Christopher Minton and Jefferson Dorsey had received word only moments before that the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals had rendered its decision not to grant Workman a new trial.

The decision came unexpectedly. It had been five months since the defense team was granted the rare en banc -- meaning "entire bench" -- to evaluate new ballistics evidence and an affidavit stating that a key eyewitness had lied on the stand more than 20 years ago when he testified that he saw Workman shoot and kill a Memphis police officer during a fast-food restaurant robbery.

In silence, Workman listened to Dorsey tell him that the 14-member panel of judges had split their votes -- directly down party lines. Seven nominated by Democratic presidents had voted to rehear his case; seven Republican nominated judges voted to lift his stay. An en banc tie is extremely rare.

Dead man talking

Mon, 20 Mar 2000 14:00:00 +0000

The lawn is a lush green around the Riverbend Maximum Security Prison, a cluster of boxy, tan buildings at the top of a hill. Take away the electric fencing, and the prison would look like a high school, tense and quiet before the bell rings. Until you've passed through a series of metal detectors and steel-locked doors, the grunts and moans of Tennessee's death row are barely audible.

Philip Workman, 46, sits down for an interview, in shackles. On April 6, he will most likely be the second man the state executes in a month's time -- and the second it has executed in 40 years. He could pass for a construction worker with his medium, muscular build and closely trimmed goatee. Wearing what he usually does, a huge pair of reading glasses and a baseball cap he made with gold lettering, WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?), he says he's skipped breakfast this morning. Too many starches.

"I don't get to move around a lot," he says. "It's easy to get fat in here."

During his 17 years on death row, fearing the day he would sit in Ol' Sparky, the nickname given to the state's electric chair, Workman has been classified as a non-hostile inmate. He does not wear shackles when meeting with family, friends or his attorneys. They are only put on when the media visits.