Alexandr Hackenschmied, born Alexander Siegfried George Hackenschmied, known later as Alexander Hammid was a Czech-American photographer, film director, cinematographer and editor. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1938 and became involved in American avant-garde cinema. He is best known for three films: Crisis, Meshes of the Afternoon and To Be Alive!. He made Meshes of the Afternoon with Maya Deren, to whom he was married from 1942 to 1947. His second marriage was to the photographer Hella Heyman, who had also collaborated with Hammid and Deren on several films. He won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Documentary for To Be Alive!, which he co-directed with Francis Thompson.
Career in Czechoslovakia and the U.S.
Born in Linz, Austria-Hungary to the son of a school-teacher, he changed his name to Alexander Hammid when he became a citizen of the United States in 1942. He is best known for his work in documentary film, both as a director, cameraman, and editor. According to Jaroslav Anděl's biography of Hackenschmied, in 1930, Hackenschmied created his first film Bezúčelná procházka which inaugurated the movement of avant-garde film in Czechoslovakia. The same year he also organized the Exhibition of New Czech Photography in the Aventinská Mansarda—a showcase for artists of the Aventinum publishing house in Prague—and the first show of European avant-garde films 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. Before emigrating from Czechoslovakia, Hackenschmied worked for the Baťa Film Studio in Zlín, founded by Jan Antonín Baťa in the 1930s who hired young filmmakers and artists to develop modern films, primarily for advertising. While employed there, Hackenschmied made numerous advertising and documentary films, one of the most famous was directed by Elmar Klos in 1937, entitled The Highway Sings, showing auto tires in motion. During the late 1930s he collaborated with the American filmmaker Herbert Kline on the feature-length documentaryCrisis and moved to the USA where he met and married Eleanora Deren, he later on named her "Maya". Meshes of the Afternoon was a home movie made by the filmmaker Hammid and his wife Maya who until that point had no experience in filmmaking. He also directed the documentaries The Forgotten Village, The Valley of the Tennessee, and A Better Tomorrow. Hammid also made the 22-minute short The Private Life of a Cat. This short film was part narrative, part documentary about cats and their daily lives. The film starts off with two cats, a male and a female. The female is eventually impregnated by the male cat, and begins to search for shelter for when she gives birth to her kittens. The film shows her giving birth to five kittens in graphic detail. In 1944, he directed a documentary featuring conductor Arturo Toscanini, Hymn of the Nations, produced by the Office of War Information. His documentary Library of Congress was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Documentary. Through the 1950s and 1960s Hammid made documentaries. In 1951, Hackenschmied and Gian Carlo Menotti co-directed the film version of Menotti's opera The Medium. Hammid directed his final film, To Be Alive!, for screening at the 1964 New York World's Fair. The film won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short in 1965. Hammid worked in partnership with filmmaker Francis Thompson for over 25 years, producing numerous “in-house” documentaries as well as several films for general viewership. One of the best known of these is the first IMAX format film, To Fly!, which premiered at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum 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. During his years with Francis Thompson, Inc. Hammid went on to be involved with several other early Imax films. Graham Ferguson, owner of the Imax Corp. recalled how he had wanted Hammid and Thompson to make the first commercial Imax films because of their extensive work in earlier large-scale multi-screen films including To Be Alive!, We Are Young and US.
Legacy
Austrian film director, Martina Kudláček directed, documentary, Aimless Walk: Alexander Hammid based on his life and work. In 2006, MoMA organized a tribute film exhibition titled, "Alexander Hammid: A Memorial Salute" based on its film archives. The Academy Film Archive has preserved Arturo Toscanini: Conducting Music of Giuseppe Verdi and Library of Congress by Alexandr Hackenschmied.
