Robert von Dassanowsky, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of German and Film Studies

EDUCATION:
Ph.D., Germanic Languages, UCLA.
MA, German (film spec.), UCLA.
BA, Political Science and German, UCLA.
American Film Institute (AFI) Conservatory Program, Los Angeles
Graduate, American Academy of Dramatic Arts

BIOGRAPHY:
Robert von Dassanowsky's research and instruction areas in film studies and media arts includes Austrian, Central European and German cinema; British and American film; neorealism, surrealism and neodecadence in Italian film; cinema of the 1960s; Western European and American popular culture; propaganda film; women filmmakers; postmodernity. His most recent book, Austrian Cinema: A History (2005) is the first English language survey of Austria's film art and industry. He continues to explore the relationship between Austrian and American film in a regular column in Vienna's Celluloid magazine. Dr. Dassanowsky is a founding vice president of the Austrian American Film Association, an award-winning playwright, has written for television and provides audio commentary for DVD releases. Additionally, he is a Contributing Advisor to the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers. Dr. Dassanowsky is also active as an independent filmmaker and is executive producer of the feature Wilson Chance (USA 2005), producer of the animated film, The Nightmare Stumbles Past (USA 2003), and executive producer of the award-winning short Semmelweis (USA/A 2001). He serves on the boards of TIE: The International Experimental Cinema Exposition and the Denver British Film Festival, and is Cinema Series Editor for the University Press of the South. Elected to the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2001, Dr. Dassanowsky is the recipient of the 2001 UCCS and 1998 College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Faculty Teaching Awards, and the 2002 College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Faculty Research Award. In 2004 he was named the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching/CASE Colorado Professor of the Year.

MEDIA/ARTS/EDITORIAL (excerpt):
Candidate Evaluator, MacArthur Fellows Program (2005).
Nominating Committee, Rockefeller Foundation Media Arts Fellowships
(2005- ).
Cinema Series Editor and Field Advisor, University Press of the South, New Orleans (2004- ).
Board of Directors, Denver British Film Society and Festival (2003- ).
Columnist (quarterly), Celluloid: The Austrian Film Magazine (2002- ). www.celluloid.at
Board of Directors, TIE: The International Experimental Cinema Exposition, Telluride/ Colorado Springs (2002- ). www.experimentalcinema.com
Editorial Board, Poetry Salzburg Review (2002- ). www.poetrysalzburg.com
Co-Sponsor, Peter Tscherkassky Retrospective, Cinematexas International Short Film Festival, Austin, Texas, Sept. 20, 2001.
Board of Directors, Flickapalooza Film Festival (Association of Independent Feature Film Producers) Los Angeles (2001-03).
Producer and Co-Head, Belvedere Film Productions Los Angeles/Vienna (1999-).
Editorial Board, Ariadne Press, Riverside, CA (1999- ).

FILM/VIDEO PRODUCTION:
Story adaptation; Producer, Mars in Aries (international feature film project in development) Belvedere Film, 2007.

Associate Producer, Fever (international feature) directed by Bruce Beresford, Popcorn Movies, 2006.

Executive Producer, Acquisition (dramatic short) directed by Joshua Crabtree, 2006.

Executive Producer, Wilson Chance (independent feature) directed by Jeffrey Bunzendahl, Bunzendahl Brothers Productions/Belvedere Film, 2005

Co-Producer, Believe (dramatic short) directed by Lesley Ann Bird, Sproutfilms, 2003. Live Action Prize, 2004 2nd Annual UCCS Student Short Film Festival.

Executive Producer, The Nightmare Stumbles Past (animated short), directed by Roland Clements, Idgetdog Productions, 2003. Animation Prize and Festival Prize, 2004 2nd Annual UCCS Student Short Film Festival; Official Selection of the 2003 New York City Horror Film Festival; 2004 New Hampshire Film Expo; 20,000 Leagues Under The Industry Festival; Conestoga Short Film Festival (First Place, Horror Category); 2005 Ozark Foothills Film Fest.

Co-Exec. Producer, Semmelweis (dramatic short) directed by Jim Berry, Young Allies Productions/Belvedere Film, 2001. Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Script Award winner; New York First Run Film Festival 2002 (Awards in Cinematography, Sound, Editing and Carl Lerner Award for Best Film with Social Significance); Houston WorldFest 2002 (Bronze Remi Award); Official Selection of the 2001 EuroShorts Warsaw and 2002 Telluride IndieFest (Winner, Short Film Category), L.A. Shorts, Palm Springs, Atlanta, Ojai (Best Short Honorable Mention), Tahoe International, New Jersey State and Newport Film Festivals; the 2003 Sarasota, Fayetteville (Grand Jury Prize for Best Short Film) and Durango Film Festivals; the 12th Prix Leonardo, Parma, Italy (Certificate of Merit in Silver), St. Petersburg, Russia (Best Short Film), Festival of Nations, Ebensee, Austria (Bronze Award).

Co-Producer, Epicure (dramatic short) New Canon Films/Belvedere Film, 2001

PUBLICATIONS: DVD
Audio Commentary to Leni Riefenstahl's Tag der Freiheit (1935), Short Vision (8) Warners DVD, 2000.

PUBLICATIONS: Books
The Vision of the Crusader's Cross: Film and Austrofascism 1933-1938. In progress.

Trip to the Movies: Psychedelic Cinema 1965-1972. In progress.
(Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Film Scholar Grant Nominee, 2005).

Austrian Cinema: A History. Jefferson and London: McFarland, 2005.
(Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Film Scholar Grant Nominee, 2003).

Mars in Aries: Translation (with Elisabeth Littell Frech) of Mars im Widder by Alexander Lernet-Holenia. Afterword by Robert von Dassanowsky. Riverside: Ariadne, 2003.

Contributing Editor, Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, 2nd Ed., 3 vols. Farmington Hills: Gale Research, 1999.

Telegrams from the Metropole: Selected Poetry 1980-1998. Salzburg: Poetry Salzburg/University of Salzburg Press, 1999.
(Pushcart Prize Nominee, 2001)

Co-Editor, Filmkunst 154, Special Issue: Austria's Hollywood/Hollywood's Austria. Vienna: Österreichische Gesellschaft für Filmwissenschaft, 1997.

Verses of a Marriage: Translation of Strophen einer Ehe by Hans Raimund. Los Angeles: Event Horizon, 1996.

Phantom Empires: The Novels of Alexander Lernet-Holenia and the Question of Postimperial Austrian Identity. Riverside: Ariadne, 1996.

PUBLICATIONS: Reference Book Contributions (excerpt)
" European Film." Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Popular Cultures, (6 vols.) Vol. 3 Europe (British Isles, Western and Eastern Europe), Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006.

Editorial Advisor (Film) and Contributor: Entries on Marlene Dietrich and Barbara Stanwyck. Notable American Women, Vol. 5, Harvard Univ. Press, 2005.

Editorial Advisor and Contributor, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 4th Edition, St. James Press, 2000.

Biographical resource, Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon, 1815-1950, Ergänzungsband. Wien: Österr. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1997-2000.

Biographical entries, Felix Czeike, Ed. Historisches Lexikon Wien, Band 5.
Wien: K & S, 1997.

PUBLICATIONS: Book Chapters (excerpt)
" Between Resistance and Collaboration: Austrian Film and Nazism Before and During the Anschluss." Cinema and the Swastika: The International Expansion of Third Reich Cinema (1933-1945). Eds. Roel Vande Winkel and David Welch. London/New York: Macmillan/Palgrave, 2006.

"Mitteleuropean Memories: Dieterle’s Juarez Film as Austrian Metaphor." Untitled Book. Ed. Günther Berger. Vienna: Peter Lang, 2006.

"Der Einfluß Arnold Fanck und Leni Riefenstahl im zeitgenössischen amerikanischen Film." Der BergFILM 1920-1940. Ed. Friedbert Aspetsberger. Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2002.

"Film Evaluation Worksheet." Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lectern: Active Learning Strategies to Engage First Year Students. Ed. Constance Staley. Wadsworth, 2002.

"Expressionist Theater Before its Time: Max Dauthendey's Jugendstil Drama Glück." Insieme: Kunst und kulturgeschichtliche Beiträge. Ed. Günther Berger. Vienna: Peter Lang, 2001.

"Habsburgischer Meta-Mythos: Alexander Lernet-Holenias Die Hexen als postmoderner Roman." Alexander Lernet-Holenia: Poesie auf dem Boulevard. Ed. Thomas Eicher and Bettina Gruber. Köln: Böhlau, 1999.

"The Role of Austria will be played by... Ingeborg Bachmann's Requiem für Fanny Goldmann as Sociopolitical Allegory." Thunder Rumbling at My Heels: Tracing Ingeborg Bachmann. Ed. Gudrun Brokoph-Mauch. Riverside: Ariadne, 1998.

"Österreich contra Ostmark: Alexander Lernet-Holenia's Mars im Widder as Resistance Novel. Literatur der inneren Emigration in Österreich. Ed. Karl Müller. Wien: Döcker Verlag, 1998.

"Between Empire and Province, or The Sleepwalkers: An Allegory of Austrofascism in Alexander Lernet-Holenia's Die Auferstehung des Maltravers." Jura Soyfer and His Time, Ed. Donald G. Daviau. Riverside, Ariadne, 1994.

PUBLICATIONS: Recent Articles

"'You Wouldn't Even Believe What Your Eyes Can See:' Hollywood's Messianism and Fascistic Reflection in Schlesinger’s The Day of the Locust." Forthcoming in Cinema Journal.

"Maximilian and Juarez in 1939: Dieterle’s Juarez Film as Mitteleuropa Metaphor." Central Europe (U.K.) November (2005).

"Mon Cousin de Liernut: France as Code for Idealized Personal and Political Identity in the ‘Austrian Novels’ of Alexander Lernet-Holenia." Austrian Studies (U.K.) Vol. 13 September (2005).

"Entdekung einer Filmnation: österreichischer Film der Gegenwart aus amerikanischer Sicht." Die Furche (Austria) 10 March 2005, sec III: 3.

"Revisiting Riefenstahl." German World Magazine. January/February (2005).

"Great Directors Series: Louise Kolm-Fleck." Senses of Cinema (Australia) October (2004) online <www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors>.

"Es 1939--por que Juarez?" ("Its 1939--Why Juarez?") with Fernando Feliu-Moggi. Encuadres: Revista Venezolana de estudios cinematograficos (Venezuela) November (2003).

"Going Home Again? Ruzowitzky's Die Siebtelbauern and the New Austrian Heimatfilm." The Germanic Review. Spring (2003).

"An Unclaimed Country: The Austrian Image in American Film and the Sociopolitics of The Sound of Music." Bright Lights Film Journal 41 (2003) online.

"A Mountain of a Ship": Locating the Bergfilm in James Cameron's Titanic. Cinema Journal 40, No. 4, Summer (2001).

"Märchen vom Glück: Postwar Austrian Cinema's Iconoclastic Missing Link." Maske und Kothurn (Austria) 46/1 (2001), Special Issue: Das Märchen vom Glück: Österreichischer Film in der Besatzungszeit.

"Casino Royale at 33: The Postmodern Epic in Spite of Itself." Bright Lights Film Journal. 28 (2000) online.
Reprinted in Blimp Film Magazine 44 (Austria) (2001).
Reprinted in 007 Magazine (UK) (2005).

ACADEMIC HONORS AND GRANTS (Excerpt):
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and CASE 2004 Colorado Professor of the Year.

Research completion grant from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Sciences and Arts for Austrian Cinema: A History, 2003.

UCCS College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Faculty Research Award, 2002.

Elected Member, European Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2001.

University of Colorado, Colorado Springs Outstanding Teaching Award, 2001.

President's Fund for the Humanities Grant, University of Colorado: Hubert Sauper
Project, 2001.