Alexandr Hackenschmied

Alexander Hackenschmied ( born December 17, 1907 in Linz, Austria - Hungary as Alexander Siegfried Georg Smahel, † 26 July 2004, New York City ) was an avant-garde photographer and film director in Czechoslovakia and in 1939 into the United States.

Life and work

Alexander Hackenschmied began to support the avant-garde movement of the early 1930s and organized one of the first projects of avant-garde films in Prague, such as films of Man Ray. He has published texts on film and photography, and a, týden in the journal Pestrý, directed some short films, including walk into the blue ( Bezúčelná procházka ) and was used as a cameraman, editor and consultant in a number of feature films and documentaries. From 1935 he worked for the company Bata in Zlin, where he had the opportunity Jan Antonín Bata to accompany his journey around the world. It is, Hackenschmied have separated themselves after two weeks to turn their own material in Sri Lanka and India. Elmar Klos used it later for three documentaries: Chudi lidé ( poor people ), Řeka života a smrti ( The river of life) and Vzpomínka na Paradise ( memory of paradise ).

In 1938, he was cinematographer on a documentary film by American director Herbert Kline of the political situation in the Czech-German border area. Early in 1939 emigrated Hackenschmied to the U.S., where the film was completed.

After Alexander Hackenschmied had received American citizenship in 1942, he took the name Alexander Hammid.

In 1943, he turned with his then-wife Maya Deren film Meshes of the Afternoon, with which he could enroll in the history of cinematography. Later Hammid worked as a cameraman and editor in other films of the theirs. More of his documentaries from this period are The Forgotten Village (1941 ), The Valley of the Tennessee ( 1944), and A Better Tomorrow (1945 ). The 22 - minute short film The Private Life of a Cat (1944 ), he turned entirely in an apartment in New York's Morton Street, where he then lived with Their Maya.

In 1944, a movie with the Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini Hymn of the Nations, which was produced by the United States Office of War Information was created. This film was in 1945, the Documentation Library of Congress in 1946 was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Documentary. 1951 Hammid was together with Gian Carlo Menotti co-director of the film version of Menotti's opera The Medium.

In 1961 Hammids began collaboration with the production company of director Francis Thompson, which he co - director and editor turned a number of films, including short documentaries and films for a mass audience, such as the IMAX film TO FLY! . As part of its collaboration with Francis Thompson, Inc. Hammid was involved in other IMAX films. The large-scale film To Be Alive 1965 finally won the Oscar for best documentary short film, after he had been shown at the New York World's Fair in 1964. More films from this period are (shown at Expo 67 ) and U.S. (shown at the Hemisfair in San Antonio, 1969) We Are Young.

It is also noteworthy Hammids photographic work is influenced by his experiences as a husband and chamber can be formally counted in the recent Czech photography (representatives are also Jiří Lehovec, Ladislav Emil Berka and Eugen Wiskovsky ).

Works

• Book: Michael Omasta (ed. ): Tribute to Sasha ( Vienna: SYNEMA, 2002)
• Documentary: Aimless Walk: Alexander Hammid (1996, 48 min. ) Director: Martina Kudlacek