What Criticism Is: Five Views on an Artistic Practice
What Criticism Is: Five Views on an Artistic Practice
- Date
- Feb 16th 2012
- With
- Damon Smith, Fernando Moreno, Dennis Lim, Boyd van Hoeij, Eithne O'Neill, Verena Lueken
Pauline Kael wrote criticism for a general audience. Manny Farber wrote criticism “to the film”, as it were. Who should the ideal critic be writing to? Why do we read criticism? Experts taking part in this panel will discuss these questions and explore how a critic finds her voice and, more generally, how to approach the task of criticism. Critics entering the professional world need to think about how they might negotiate writing for an editor with particular tastes and / or a publication with a defined voice and sensibility, while also pursuing the adventure of writing. The experts will provide practical guidance for how to balance self-expression with the need to reach an audience, but will also speak to larger concerns about the critical enterprise itself.
Damon Smith
New York-based curator (Cinelan, Project: New Cinephilia) and critic (Time Out, The Boston Globe, Cinema Scope). A contributing editor of Filmmaker Magazine, he co-produces the Reverse Shot Talkies video series and is the editor, most recently, of Michael Winterbottom: Interviews.
Fernando Moreno
Film professor and critic. He alternates his academic work with his advertisement production company and various film journalism contributions, including the weekly radio cinema show El Cine y… It has been on-air in Mexico City for the past six years. He directed documentaries and fiction short-films.
Dennis Lim
Dennis Lim is a writer and film curator in New York City. Since 2013 he has been the director of programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, where he also serves on the selection committee for the New York Film Festival, as co-chair of the New Directors/New Films programming committee, and as co-organizer of annual and recurring programs including Art of the Real, Print Screen, and Projections.
© John Bruce
Boyd van Hoeij
Contributing critic for Variety and a freelance film writer for outlets such as Indiewire, Cineuropa and Filmkrant. He also edits the film pages of Winq magazine and its English-language twin, Mate.
Eithne O'Neill
Irish-born writer and film journalist for publications like “Nouveau Monde” and the leading French film magazine Positif. She also wrote a book on Stephen Frears and co-authored another one about Ernst Lubitsch.
Verena Lueken
German film journalist and author, who has been with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung since 1989. She has been a cultural correspondent in New York and associate editor of the feuilleton section. She won the Joseph Roth Award for Journalism in 1992 and published several books on cinema.