Academy announces 2009 Film Scholars

Mar 06, 2009 by Ian Evans

Anne Friedberg and Peter Lev have been chosen as the ninth pair of Academy Film Scholars by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The Academy’s Institutional Grants Committee selected the two scholars for the honor on the basis of their manuscript proposals. Each will receive $25,000 from the Academy to aid in the research and writing of their respective projects.

Friedberg will explore the life and work of Slavko Vorkapic, known throughout his career as Hollywood’s resident montage expert. Her book will examine Vorkapic’s comprehensive filmography as a special effects cinematographer and montage sequence unit director as well as how his work has influenced subsequent generations of film writers, directors and editors. The book will be titled Montage in Hollywood: The Cinematics of Slavko Vorkapic.

Meanwhile, Lev, will delve into the history of Twentieth Century-Fox during the three-decade period the studio was helmed by Darryl Zanuck and Spyros Skouras. The book will focus on both the studio’s Los Angeles-based production business and the New York-based distribution and exhibition business as well as the executives who ran them. It will also examine the contributions of the artists behind many of Fox’s successes including John Ford, Elia Kazan, Shirley Temple, Marilyn Monroe, and Gregory Peck. Lev’s book will be tit­led Twentieth Century-Fox: The Zanuck-Skouras Years.

The new Academy Film Scholars will receive the first half of their $25,000 grant at a luncheon this April. The remaining half will be presented upon completion of the manuscripts, when Friedberg and Lev will present their projects in lecture form at a public Academy event.