Vjekoslav Afric(1906-1980)

Croatian film actor and director. Vjekoslav Vjeko Afric was born August 26, 1906, on the island of Hvar in what was then Austria-Hungary, but is now Croatia. He was schooled initially in Hvar, but finished high school in Split, on the Croatian mainland. Following his basic schooling, he enrolled in the Academy of Figurative Art, specializing in painting. Eventually he studied at Zagreb's School of Dramatic Arts. He graduated in 1927 and made his way to Vienna and Prague before returning to Split and joining the Dalmatian National Theatre. He toured Serbia in 1928 with the theatre company of the Actors' Association, then spent the next three years in various theatrical companies in Sarajevo, Banja Luka, and Belgrade. Moving back to Zagreb, he joined the new Great Theatre of Zagreb and helped found the Zagreb Drama Studio, where he acted and directed. Over the course of these years, he played many roles, especially classic roles such as Hamlet, Orsino, Oberon, Raskolnikov, and Faust. During the Second World War, Afric joined other actors in organizing stage productions to be presented in areas that had been liberated from the Nazis. He directed and acted in plays produced by the Theatre of the National Liberation of Yugoslavia from 1942 to 1944 and worked closely with Yugoslav partisans in the war effort. After the war, he became a pioneer of the new Yugoslavian film industry, working on socialist cinema. He also founded a short-lived film school, and taught at the Academy of Dramatic Art. Afric directed the first post-war feature film in the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, entitled Slavica, a story about young partisans in the war. His third film as director, Hoja! Lero!, was dismissed by critics, and Afric decided to retire from directing film. Although he continued to act in films occasionally until 1965, Afric devoted most of his efforts to teaching. He co-founded and directed the High Film School in Belgrade, and then became a full professor at Belgrade's Academy of Theatre Arts and the rector of the University of Arts in that city, as well. He served as president of the Trade Union of Cultural and Artistic Institutions. Afric retired in 1970, living out his final years in Tribunj, writing essays and his memoirs. He died just days before his 74th birthday, on July 28, 1980, in Split. He is buried in the Alley of Deserving Citizens in Belgrade's New Cemetery. and others.