Jean-Michel Frodon – författare

Hollywood est-il en passe d''imposer au monde entier ses images et ses récits ? Ou bien au contraire, le refus de cette mondialisation des imaginaires mène-t-il à des replis identitaires lourds de haines archaïques et de nouveaux conflits ? L''histoire commune du cinéma et des nations depuis cent ans aide à mieux poser ces questions, et à entrevoir des réponses. Parce que les peuples ont, comme les individus, besoin de rêver pour ne pas devenir fous. Parce qu''au XXe siècle leurs rêves collectifs auront été les films. John Wayne et le citoyen Kane, Alexandre Nevski ou Mabuse sont des héros politiques de notre époque. Entre le raz de marée industriel de Titanic et les « nouvelles vagues », toujours recommencées, de Rossellini à Kiarostami, de Godard à Wong Karwai ou à Egoyan, se déroule une partie où le pouvoir et les songes des hommes sont en jeu. Refusant la solitude de l''internaute et la globalisation de la planète, l''interrogation l''un par l''autre du cinéma et de la nation aide à refuser de s''incliner d''emblée devant la toute-puissance des techniques et de la marchandise. Critique et journaliste au Monde, Jean-Michel Frodon est notamment l''auteur de L''Âge moderne du cinéma français.

Named 3rd best book of 2021 in Sight & SoundA comprehensive look at the work of Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke by celebrated critic Jean-Michel Frodon. Includes an extensive in-depth interview with Jia, essays on each of his films, conversations with his main collaborators, including Zhao Tao, and a selection of his own writings.Translated from the French by Sally Shafto. Foreword by Dudley Andrew. Afterword by Walter Salles.“The World of Jia Zhangke is a rarity, for it comes from a sustained encounter of one of our greatest critics with one of our greatest directors. Thankfully both are still working at full tilt.”—Dudley Andrew

Examines the variety of cinematic responses to the Holocaust as well as the Shoah's impact on cinematic expression itself.From The Great Dictator to Schindler's List, the extermination of the Jews of Europe has driven the cinema, more than any other form of artistic expression, to question its methods, techniques, and ethics. It is with reference to the Shoah that a decisive part of the thought behind modern cinema has been constructed, and, consciously or not, many of the greatest films of the past sixty years bear the mark of this event. To give an account of these phenomena, Cinema and the Shoah brings together filmmakers, historians, journalists, philosophers, and researchers to explore how the Shoah, as a historical event, implicated and mobilized the cinema by profoundly questioning its modes of recounting and storytelling, of putting visions onscreen. The book also includes a filmography (compiled with the assistance of the Fritz Bauer Institute of Frankfurt) that lists over three hundred feature-length films, short films, and documentaries about the Shoah, produced between 1945 and the present.