Alexandr Hackenschmied

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Alexandr Hackenschmied (17 December 1907 - 26 July 2004) was a leading avant-garde photographer and filmmaker in Czechoslovakia between the two world wars. Later, he played a similar role in American avant-guard cinema, along with his wife, filmmaker Maya Deren, to whom he was married from 1942 to 1947.

He remains barely known to the general public because he has lived abroad since 1939. Also, when in the United States he changed his name, at Deren's behest, to Alexander Hammid. The entire archive of his work was lost in World War II, except for some photos published in magazines.

According to Jaroslav Andel's biography, Alexandr Hackenschmied, in 1930, Hackenschmied created his first film Bezucelna prochazka (Aimless Walk) which inauguarated the movement of avant-garde film in Czecholovakia. The same year he also organized the Exhibition of New Czech Photography in the Aventinska mansarda (a showcase for artists of the Aventinum publishing house, Prague), and the first show of European avant-garde film in the Kotva cinema, also in Prague. He also published a number of articles on photography and film, in which he formulated the new aesthetics of both fields.

During the late 1930s he collaborated with the American documentary filmmaker Herbert Kline on the film Crisis and moved to the USA where he met and worked with Deren. In 1944, he directed a documentary featuring conductor Arturo Toscanini, Toscanini: Hymn of the Nations. In 1951, Hackenschmied and Gian Carlo Menotti co-directed the film version of Menotti's opera The Medium.

In 1964 he co-directed the documentary To Be Alive! which was shown at the 1964 World Fair and won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short in 1965.

Hackenschmied was a Buddhist and attributed his longevity to his Buddhist lifestyle.

Book: Michael Omasta (ed.): Tribute to Sasha. Vienna: SYNEMA, 2002. (German/English).