“Critical Conditions: Loving cinema and writing about films in the digital age”

Tuesday, October 18^th at 3 p.m. in Studio 3 at the Auditorium Parco della Musica, the Rome Film Fest presents the panel “Critical Conditions: loving cinema and writing about films in the digital age”. The Rome Film Fest has decided to open a panel for discussion, information and debate that features the participation of some leading international film critics (A.O. Scott, “The New York Times”; Justin Chang, “Los Angeles Times”; and Julien Gester, “Libération”) as well as a number of Italian journalists from print and online media, magazines, and academia. The event is curated and moderated by Alberto Crespi and Mario Sesti. The panel aims to shed light on the careers and the motivation of individuals who have turned their love of film into a profession, all the more so since the purpose and function of criticism have undergone changes even greater, perhaps, than the changes that have affected film itself in the last thirty years.
Never before now, in fact, has access to films been as widespread as it is today, especially thanks to the Internet, yet never before now, with print media struggling, has the task of giving stability, meaning and purpose to the work of those who write about film seemed such a daunting challenge. The Web has exponentially multiplied the practice of expressing sometimes amateurish opinions and ideas about films; yet the chance to recommend a film and reveal its secret energy to readers, or its ability to stir their emotions, now hardly seems up to the job of competing with market strategies and the intense mediatization of our lives. Is there still a place for those who have spent years perfecting their writing, a place to explore and understand the immeasurable experience of watching a film and sharing this with readers? A place that that these writers can defend, consolidate and even reinvent? Will the spread and the hegemony of the audiovisual medium in the digital age lead us toward a future in which a film review will consist of images and sounds, with the film critic using the language of film itself, just as a book critic resorts to the language of the novels he or she analyzes?
THE PANELLISTS
Justin Chang is a film critic for the Los Angeles Times and a regular contributor to NPR’s “Fresh Air Weekend” and “FilmWeek.” Before joining The Times, he was chief film critic at Variety. He is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. In 2014, he received the inaugural Roger Ebert Award from the African-American Film Critics Association.
Julien Gester is a journalist, film critic and co-editor of the Culture section of French daily newspaper Libération. Former editor of the Culture section of Grazia’s French edition, he started as a staff writer for weekly magazine Les Inrockuptibles and as a programmer. He actively contributes to magazines and reviews such as Trafic, Vanity Fair, and Vogue. As a musician, he has also composed and played original soundtracks for films.
A.O. Scott joined The New York Times as a film critic in January 2000. Previously, he was a Sunday book reviewer for Newsday, and a frequent contributor to Slate, The New York Review of Books and many other publications. He has also served on the editorial staffs of Lingua Franca and The New York Review of Books. Among his publication: “Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth”, a work on the importance of criticism as a discipline, as one of the noblest, most creative, and urgent activities of modern existence, that will be published in Italy next year by Saggiatori.