During the 1910s, action-packed films with their death-defying screen heroes ensured full cinemas and full box offices. This presentation by Vienna based film historian Hemma Marlene Prainsack provides an overview of the history of the so-called Sensationsfilm, the fore-runner of the action genre in German cinema and its most important representatives, above all Harry Piel (1892-1963), also known as the “Dynamite Director” and “German Douglas Fairbanks”. Selected film examples and photos will illustrate how daring and risk-taking the filmmakers were and how spellbinding their film heritage still is today.
Hemma Marlene Prainsack works as a film historian, editor, and curator. Her PhD thesis, “Grober Unfug! Harry Piel und das Kino der Sensationen” (Nonsense! Harry Piel and the Cinema of Sensations), was dedicated to film star Harry Piel and the development of the action genre in the 1910s.
