Etude de la critique cinématographique française à travers l'analyse des différentes acceptions du mot critique, son histoire, une réflexion sur les effets esthétiques, économiques et politiques de la critique, une comparaison avec d'autres pays et cultures. L'ensemble est accompagné d'une sélection de textes critiques du début du XXe siècle à aujourd'hui.
Jean-Michel Frodon was born and raised in Paris. One might say he was also born and raised in cinema, since both his parents worked in the field. He studied history, became an educator, then a photographer, before becoming a film critic and journalist almost by accident (if such things can happen). A former senior film editor for Le Point and Le Monde, he was also editor-in-chief of Cahiers du cinéma (2003-2009). He now writes for the online magazine Slate.fr. A relentless traveller, always willing to connect the far to the nearby, the aesthetic with the political, he teaches at Sciences Po in Paris, at the ancient University of St Andrews, Scotland, and at the Film Factory created by Béla Tarr in Sarajevo. He is the author or editor of books dedicated to film history, theory, French and Chinese cinema, and on several directors, including: La Projection nationale (1998), Conversation avec Woody Allen (2000), Hou Hsiao-hsien (2005), Horizon cinéma (2006), Le Cinéma chinois (2006), Robert Bresson (2008), Gilles Deleuze et les images (2008), La Critique de cinéma (2008), Amos Gitai, Genèses (2009), Cinema and the Shoah (2010), Le Cinéma d Edward Yang (2010), Le Cinéma français, de la Nouvelle Vague à nos jours (2010), Assayas par Assayas (2014), L Art du cinéma (2014), O Mundo de Jia Zhang-ke (2014) and Que fait le cinéma ? (2015).