Où va la critique française?

Unfortunately I also missed the French roundtable on the crisis of film criticism, on April 7th 2008, mirror to the NYU event of last month. Likewise, critics came to La Fémis, the parisian School of cinema, to discuss problematics of a changing practice with film students. Likewise I only read a second hand digest, posted by Damien at Château de Sable, so I'm only commenting myself based on partial assumptions. A few differences. This "ciné-club" debate was more modest, shorter, and didn't have the multinational character of NYU guests. However it's more interesting to form a panel with guests with a different job in film culture : in Paris there was Antoine de Baecque (critic, historian of cinema), Hervé Joubert-Laurencin (Cinema scholar), Nicolas Klotz (filmmaker), Sandrine Marques (blogueuse, Contrechamp-Media), and one who didn't make it (due to the financial crisis at Le Monde) Cyril Neyrat (Critic, Cahiers).

"Where is going cinema criticism? Situation and perspectives of a practice"

excerpts:

DE BAECQUE : There is an overload of films produced. And there is only 4 days to publish a review on a film, between Wednersday [weekly national release] and Saturday [first Box Office weekend]. Too short. And every critic publishes the same blurb.

(...)

JOUBERT-LAURENCIN : We need to define "Criticism". Art historian Adolfo Venturi used to say that criticism must define its object.

(...)

DE BAECQUE : We can read everywhere the phrases "Beauty", "a beautiful film". Beauty has been stolen by publicity. Against the shame of becoming a quote-whore critic, we used to make sure never to use such easily quotable phrases ever in our reviews.

(...)

JOUBERT-LAURENCIN : There is also a violent rhetoric that consist in declaring "this is cinema", "this isn't cinema".

(...)

KLOTZ : What is the role of cinema if it remains an autistic bubble, ignoring its power of "resistance" like Deleuze said. Cinema is also an archive.