Dassanowsky was born in New York City on January 28, 1965 to Austrian-American pioneering film studio founder and musician
Elfi von Dassanowsky. A student of the
American Academy of Dramatic Arts and a graduate of
UCLA (MA, PhD), where he also served as Visiting Professor of German, Dassanowsky was a widely published academician, independent film producer, playwright, and had written for television. He held dual American and Austrian citizenship. Dassanowsky was named CU Distinguished Professor of Film and Austrian Studies by the University of Colorado System in November 2020. He was professor of German and Visual and Performing Arts, and founding director of
film studies at the
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs since 1993, and became particularly known for his influential scholarly work on Austrian author
Alexander Lernet-Holenia, German filmmaker and photographer
Leni Riefenstahl, and on Austrian and Central European film. He served as Adjunct Professor of Media Communication at
Webster University Vienna and was an Affiliate Faculty of the
Global Center for Advanced Studies (GCAS) New York since 2017 and member of the Board of Directors of the GCAS Research Institute
Dublin since 2019. Dassanowsky was founding president of the Colorado chapter of
PEN and was a founding Vice President of the Austrian American Film Association (AAFA). Additionally, he was the Contributing Editor of the
Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, a Contributing Advisor to the
International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, contributor to
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Popular Cultures, and was the author of
Austrian Cinema: A History (2005), the first English language survey of this national cinema. Among his other publications is a collection of essays on
New Austrian Film edited with Oliver C. Speck (2011), edited collections on
Hugo von Hofmannsthal's play
Der Schwierige (Iudicium 2011),
Quentin Tarantino's
Inglourious Basterds: Manipulations of Metafilm (
Continuum 2012), and on
World Film Locations: Vienna (Intellect 2012). His study,
Screening Transcendence: Film Under Austrofascism and the Hollywood Hope 1933–1938, was published by
Indiana University Press in May 2018. He served on several editorial and advisory boards of literary publications in the U.S.,
Canada,
Austria and
Poland, including
Osiris,
Rampike,
Poetry Salzburg Review,
Journal of Austrian Studies,
Colloquia Germanica,
Studia Germanica Posnaniensia of the
Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and the
Journal of Austrian-American History. In addition to publications in scholarly journals he was also a contributor to
Senses of Cinema,
Bright Lights Film Journal and
The Vienna Review. His
Telegrams from the Metropole: Selected Poems 1980–1998 received a
Pushcart Prize nomination in 2000. His poetry book
Soft Mayhem was published in 2010 (
Poetry Salzburg). The English translation of Austrian playwright Felix Mitterer's treatment of the life of Nazi resister
Jägerstätter by Gregor Thuswaldner and Dassanowsky (
University of New Orleans Press 2015) received its American staged dramatic reading premiere under the direction of
Guy Ben-Aharon at the
Austrian Cultural Forum New York in December 2016. He authored over ninety articles and essays in book collections, journals, and periodicals. ==Producer and media appearances==