1966 To Be Alive inscribed by Hackenschmied

Hammid, Alexander (Sáša Hammid); Francis Thompson; Alastair Reid. To Be Alive! New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966. Oblong 18 × 25 cm. Hardcover in original pictorial dust jacket. Unpaginated (ca. 80 pp.). Book design by Theodore Kamecke. Richly illustrated throughout in full color with sequential film stills from the Academy Award-winning documentary To Be Alive!. Warmly inscribed on the title page by Sáša Hammid (Alexander Hackenschmied / Alexander Hammid). Published to accompany the landmark documentary film To Be Alive!, produced by Francis Thompson and Alexander Hammid for Johnson Wax. The film premiered at Expo 67 in Montreal, where it was shown in the United Nations Pavilion, and won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The innovative, multiscreen production became one of the defining achievements of immersive exhibition cinema. Alexander Hammid (1907–2004), born Alexander Hackenschmied in Czechoslovakia, was a pioneering avant-garde filmmaker whose career spanned Czech experimental cinema, American documentary, and collaborations with Maya Deren. A wonderful example of 1960s graphic book design, translating the film's dynamic montage into book form through cinematic sequences of images and minimalist typography.