Michel Ciment was one of the references of film critics, underlines France Inter. The writer and radio producer was a regular columnist on the show “Le Masque et la Plume”.
Michel Ciment, film critic and historian, died at the age of 85, France Inter learned on Monday, November 13, from those around him. Journalist, writer, radio producer, Michel Ciment was the publication director of the magazine Positive, a monthly on cinema. He was also a contributor to France Culture and participated in the France Inter show “Le Masque et la Plume”.
It was by sending a text on Orson Welles in 1963 to the journal Positive that he joined the editorial staff of the cinema magazine of which he would later take charge of the publication. In 1970, he joined the team of the cultural program “Le Masque et la Plume” on France Inter, of which he was one of the members. He last appeared on the show on September 24. Michel Ciment was also producer of the show “Projection Privée” on France Culture, from 1990 to 2016.
Witness to the world of cinema, Michel Ciment created close links with directors from all over the world and produced numerous monographs such as Kazan by Kazan, The Rosi File, Kubrick, John Boorman a visionary in his time. He is also the author of a book on American cinema with Conquerors of a new worldand a book of memories with Shared Cinema. He was also an honorary lecturer in American civilization at Denis-Diderot-Paris VII University.
A “huge critic and historian”
“The entire ‘Mask and the Feather’ family has lost one of its closestreacted to France Inter Jérôme Garcin, producer of the show. It is perhaps the freest, most encyclopedic spirit that film criticism has ever produced.” France Culture salutes a “an immense critic and historian who dedicated his entire life to transmitting, through words and writing, his erudition and his passion for the seventh art”. “To those who oppose arthouse films and popular films”Michel Ciment responded “that cinema, the real thing, is the one that abolishes the borders that separate us from others”recalls France Culture.
Gilles Jacob, former president of the Cannes Film Festival, says on “respect” to the journalist, who “was not only a great critic, an internationally recognized historian, but a curious mind about cinema and art having fought throughout his life. His proximity to the great filmmakers maintained the momentum of the Positif magazine which he directed since a long time”.