Renowned Film Critic to Speak at VCU

By Tom Gresham

Jonathan Rosenbaum, one of the most important American film critics of the past 30 years, will speak at Virginia Commonwealth University on Dec. 1.

Rosenbaum will discuss the topic, “Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephila,” at the Grace Street Theater, 930-934 W. Grace St., at 7 p.m. The Cinema Program in the VCU School of the Arts is presenting the event as part of its Cinematheque Program. Admission is free and open to the public.

Rosenbaum served as the head film critic at the Chicago Reader from 1987 to 2008 and has contributed to most of the world’s notable film publications, including Cahiers Du Cinéma and Film Comment. He is the author of many books on film, including “Film: The Front Line,” “Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism,” “Moving Places: A Life at the Movies,” “Movies as Politics” and “Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons,” which includes a list of his 1,000 favorite films of all time – slightly more than half of which were American. Rosenbaum’s most popular work is “Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Movies We Can See.”

The influential French New Wave director Jean Luc-Godard has praised Rosenbaum, saying, “I think there is a very good film critic in the United States today, a successor of James Agee, and that is Jonathan Rosenbaum. He’s one of the best; we don’t have writers like him in France today.”

Rosenbaum also edited “This is Orson Welles,” a book by Welles and Peter Bogdanovich that features a collection of interviews and other materials related to Welles, and he was a consultant on the re-editing of Welles’ “Touch of Evil,” which was released in 1998.