A pioneer not only of underwater photography and filming, but also of diving itself, Hans Hass took his first underwater photographs in 1938, using a home-made watertight housing. The following year Hans undertook an expedition to the coral reefs of Curacao, where he shot his first film Pirsch Unter Wasser (Underwater Stalking). Throughout the 1930s and 1940s Hans Hass photographed and filmed the marvels of the undersea world, producing numerous films for cinema, including Menschen unter Haien (Men Among Sharks) and Abenteuer im Roten Meer (Under The Red Sea), which won first prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1951 for Best Documentary.
That same year Hans Hass founded the International Institute for Submarine Research and purchased the ship Xarifa, from which he shot the Oscar winning feature film Unternehmen Xarifa (Under the Caribbean), which included the first underwater shots of a sperm whale.
Hans Hass made numerous programmes for the BBC, beginning in 1956 with Diving to Adventure, before finally giving up diving and filmmaking in 1961 to concentrate on developing his Energon Theory on 'energy-gaining systems', and founding the International Hans Hass Institute for Energon-Cybernetic Research at the University of Vienna in 1999.
During his career Hans Hass has written 28 books, made 105 films and won numerous awards, including the Outstanding Achievement Award at Wildscreen 2004.
View the oral history of Hans Hass Underwater Stalking (1939) | Cameraman, Presenter |
| Men among Sharks (1942) | Director, Camera |
| Under the Red Sea (1952) | Director, Presenter, Camera, Producer |
| Under the Caribbean (1954) | Commentary, Writer, Director, Camera, Producer |
| Diving to Adventure: In the Aegean (1956) | Presenter |
| Travellers' Tales: The Undersea World of Adventure: Hans Hass: Underwater Photography (1958) | Narrator, Photography, Director |
