Archival Footage of Serge Prokofieff  

Following the 50th Anniversary Celebration of Peter and the Wolf my interest in Prokofieff began to focus on the fact that years later, l991, would be the hundredth anniversary of his birth. I thought...no one knows this composer as a person, with all his complexities that shaped his vast musical creations. I thought a documentary was in order.

To make a very long story very short, my documentary never came to fruition. However, in the act of attempting to create something, I enlisted the help of Michael Klebnikoff who acted as an intermediary and translator as we probed the Russian bureaucracy by telephone conference calls searching for any archival film footage they might have of Prokofieff himself. Lo and behold, one day I found a package in the lobby of my apartment building. It was a brown paper bag wrapped with string, with stamps all over the front and back, resembling a package of cookies that might be sent by grandma.

I had the film processed and had the joy of seeing and hearing Prokofieff not only perform, but be interviewed. Some of the silent footage, I believe, dates back to 1927 while the sound portion, in his Dacha, is probably from 1946. It is made public here for the first time.

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