Cinephilia and the future of film journalism

[Admin]

There's an interesting article by Nico Baumbach in the March/April 2012 Film Comment about Cinephilia that I found quite apt while resurrecting this forum.

It charts the different approaches towards 'cinephilia' taken by two opposing camps - journalism and academia. The article notes how a kind of false dichotomy has been imagined about these two camps, where academia has been accused of examining film from a purely scientific perspective, with no cinephiliac love necessary, while journalists/writers alone hold the flame for a rather confused and tortured critical adoration of cinema.

The article charts the history of this argument, from the Screen days and Mulvey, Metz et al, to the present day where cinematic culture itself seems somewhat archaic and lost amid the multimedia landscape.

I thought it was quite apt because this is the kind of argument that Durgnat fought back in the day, and it's still being vociferously debated. In fact it's probably more timely than ever because, as I was discussing with kgy the other day, professional film journalism is something of a dying art, leaving academia the sole benefactor of cinematic discourse. With bloggers willing to write for free and newspapers either in financial disarray or so disregarding of film criticism as to employ celebrity writers over experts, the days of a healthy discourse between numerous periodical publications are well and truly numbered. Of course non-academic film appreciation will continue to thrive in the new world, even if it's in the 140-character medium of twitter, but you do have to wonder what harm it will do to the culture eventually. Anyway, I'm sure some of you have a strong opinion on these matters...

James