Slavko Vorkapich (1894–1976) was both a major film theoretician and a distinguished Hollywood practitioner of his own famous theory of montage editing. His 40-year career in Hollywood included providing montage sequences for such directors as Howard Hawks, George Cukor, and Frank Capra. “Vorky” was also a pioneer of the American experimental film, and in the earliest days of what is now MoMA’s Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1, he gave a highly influential lecture that helped to legitimize Iris Barry’s nascent Museum of Modern Art Film Library as a serious curatorial pursuit. Vlada Petric, a fellow Serbian and one-time student of Vorkapich’s, was a scholar-in-residence at the MoMA Film Study Center while working toward NYU’s first PhD in cinema studies. Petric went on to be the first curator of the Harvard Film Archive and an internationally acclaimed scholar, filmmaker, actor, and raconteur. Tonight, Petric screens and discusses several examples of Vorkapich’s work, and presents the New York premiere of his own tribute to his mentor, Symphony of Hands.
Organized by Charles Silver, Associate Curator, Department of Film.
Thanks to the Harvard Film Archive.