Author: kinopravda

Vladimir ‘’Vlada’’ Petrić (11 March 1928, Prnjavor, Kingdom of Yugoslavia – 13 November 2019, Belgrade, Serbia) was an eminent film studies scholar, a Harvard University professor, and the co-founder of the Harvard Film Archive. He was the first recipient of a PhD in a film studies in the United States. Throughout his creative career, Mr. Petrić directed for film, television, and theater, focusing on producing and directing experimental video essays later in his life. Petrić’s academic publications are marked by seminal works in his areas of expertise, which include film form and technique, particularly in American and Soviet cinema.

Vlada Petrić graduated from the English Language and Literature Department of the University of Belgrade in 1956. Prior to this, he worked as a teaching assistant for acting and directing at the Academy of Theater and Film in Belgrade, where he also received a degree in film and theater directing in 1958. He also served as a director at Radio Television Belgrade from its founding in 1958. After receiving a professorship in film history at the Academy of Theater and Film in 1960, Mr. Petrić spent the period 1965-1966 on a study trip in the Soviet Union at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography, where he conducted research into Soviet cinema under the tutelage of Lev Kuleshov and Nikolai Lebedev. In 1970, Petrić went to the United States as the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, where he enrolled at New Your University and in 1973 became the first person to receive a doctoral degree in film studies at a US institution of higher education.

In the period between 1972 and 1974, Petrić was a visiting professor at the Department of English Language and Literature at the State University of New York (SUNY). Petrić was then offered the Henry Luce Chair of Cinema at Harvard University in 1972 and remained in that position until 1997. During this period, he also lectured extensively at universities across the United States and Europe. Together with the legendary documentarian Robert Gardner and the influential philosopher Stanley Cavell he established the Harvard Film Archive and served as its Founding Curator until his retirement in 1997.