Alexandr Hackenschmied

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Alexandr Hackenschmied (1907–2004) was a leading photographer and filmmaker in Czechoslovakia between the two world wars. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1938 and became involved in American avant-garde cinema. His film, Meshes of the Afternoon, which he made with filmmaker Maya Deren—to whom he was married from 1942 to 1947—has become an icon of avant-garde cinema.

He grew up in Prague. He made his first silent experimental film, Bezúčelná procházka [Aimless Walk] in 1930. Working as a cinematographer for the leftist American documentarian Herbert Kline, he fled Czechoslovakia in 1938 to the US where he met and married Eleonora Derenkowskaya who took the name, perhaps with his advice, of Maya Deren, much as he too took a new name. With her he collaborated on the classic avant-garde film Meshes in the Afternoon (1943) that established her reputation that survived their divorce (1942-47). In the 1960s, Hammid began collaborating with the sometime painter Francis Thompson on multi-screen films: To Be Alive (1964) (which won an Oscar after being shown at the New York World's Fair in 1964), We Are Young (on six screens for the Montreal World's Fair/Expo 67 in 1967) and US (for San Antonio's Hemisfair in 1969). Later Hammid and Thompson produced To Fly! (1976), first IMAX format film, which premiered at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum (NASM) at the museum’s grand opening celebration on July 1, 1976; produced in conjunction with MacGillivray Freeman Films, it continues to play regularly at the Air and Space Museum. Died 2004 in New York City.

Literature
Films
  • Aimless Walk: Alexander Hammid, 48 min, 1996. Documentary film, directed by Martina Kudlacek.
See also

Czech Republic#Experimental_film.2C_avant-garde_film

External links