Three-time Oscar-winning editor and sound designer Walter Murch, who has frequently collaborated with Francis Ford Coppola on movies including The Conversation (1974), Apocalypse Now (1979) and The Godfather: Part III (1990), will address San Francisco Film Festival attendees tonight about the origins of cinema and the innovators, such as Thomas Edison and Beethoven, who helped shape its prehistory.

Murch, 66, who has more than four decades of experience in the film industry, was already working toward a career in big-screen entertainment when, while attending the graduate program at the University of Southern California’s film school, he befriended future luminaries like John Milius (1982’s Conan the Barbarian) and George Lucas. Murch started editing and mixing sound professionally in 1969, with Coppola’s The Rain People.

His “State of Cinema Address” begins this afternoon at 4 p.m. at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas. Tickets cost $10 for San Francisco Film Society members, $11 for students, seniors and the disabled, and $12 for all others. For more information, visit the festival’s website.