Series

Jon Vickers Scoring Award

Each year, IU Cinema runs a juried competition that awards one student from the composition department in the Jacobs School of Music a commission to write an original score for a silent film. The score is performed live at IU Cinema by an ensemble of student musicians to a screening of the film, managed in part by student projectionists and sound engineers.

The Jon Vickers Scoring Award (JVSA) is named after IU Cinema’s founding director Jon Vickers; it is an IU Cinema-exclusive program produced in partnership with the Jacobs School of Music, and is generously endowed by former IU Trustee the Honorable P.A. Mack Jr.

Past JVSA scores have gone on to be included in the renowned Pordenone Silent Film Festival (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto) and released on Blu-ray such as Kino Lorber’s acclaimed boxset Cinema’s First Nasty Women.