Belvedere Film: A Short History
Belvedere Film is the 1999 re-establishment of the film studio created in Vienna, Austria in 1946 by producer August Diglas, silent-film pioneer Emmerich Hanus, and one of the youngest of the few women in history to co-found a film studio, singer and pianist Elfi von Dassanowsky. This first new postwar studio in Central Europe created important feature comedies, dramas, musicals as well as future star careers between 1946 and 1951. John Walker, the editor of Halliwell's Who's Who in Movies credits Belvedere Film for having helped "kick-start the revival of the German-language film industry."
The new Belvedere Film production company of Los Angeles and Vienna was headed by one of the original studio founders, Elfi von Dassanowsky, until her passing in 2007. It serves to distribute the historical Belvedere Film productions on video internationally and has produced, co-produced or executive produced award-winning film projects. The company is member of Film Independent, the Austrian American Film Association, the Austrian Association of Film Producers (AAFP), and the American Federation of Film Producers (AFFP).
Belvedere Film LLC specializes in partnering with Central European companies and U.S. film and cable production venues to co-produce unique and high quality independent features, dramatic shorts and documentaries.
Robert Dassanowsky, CEO/Producer, Belvedere Film LLC
An acclaimed film and cultural historian, and the Director of Film Studies at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Robert Dassanowsky is also an independent producer and has written for stage and television. He serves on several film festival, grant-making, and editorial boards, is a member of the European Academy of Film, Austrian Academy of Film, the European Academy of Sciences and Art, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (UK). He is the author/editor of several books including Austrian Cinema: A History (McFarland, 2005), New Austrian Film (Berghahn, 2011), Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds: A Manipulation of Metacinema (Continuum, 2012), World Film Locations: Vienna (Intellect, 2012), and Screening Transcendence: Film Under Austrofascism and the Hollywood Hope 1933-38 (U Indiana Press 2018).
