Alexandr Hackenschmied

Alexandr Hackenschmied, born Alexander Siegried George Smahel, known later as Alexander Hammid (17 December 1907, Linz – 26 July 2004, New York City) 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 (1939), Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) and To Be Alive! (1964). He made Meshes of the Afternoon, with his wife Maya Deren—to whom he was married from 1942 to 1947.

He won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) for To Be Alive! (1964), which he co-directed with Francis Thompson.

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 Andel's biography of Hackenschmied, in 1930, Hackenschmied created his first film Bezúčelná procházka (Aimless Walk) which inaugurated the movement of avant-garde film in Czechoslovakia. 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 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.

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