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Kent Jones (critic)

Kent Jones
OccupationFilm critic, editor, film director
NationalityAmerican
Alma materMcGill University, New York University

Kent Jones (born 1957)[1] is an American film critic and filmmaker.

Biography

Kent Jones grew up in Berkshire County, Massachusetts before attending McGill University in the late 1970s. He then transferred to New York University where he studied filmmaking. Jones later recalled, "I had a very romantic notion of studying film with Nick Ray, who was a teacher at NYU, but Nick died before I had the chance to take his class and I eventually dropped out of school."[1]

He worked at New Video, the first video store in Manhattan, before writing professionally as a film critic. He would later become a correspondent for Cahiers du Cinéma and his criticism would later be published in Bookforum, Artforum, and Cinema Scope. His writing would also appear in Film Comment beginning in 1996, and he later became the publication's editor-at-large. A collection of his work was later published as Physical Evidence: Selected Film Criticism in 2007.[1][2]

In the early 1990s, Jones worked as a video archivist for Martin Scorsese at his offices in the Brill Building. He eventually worked on many of Scorsese's documentaries on film history, and he later co-directed several including A Letter to Elia (2010), and directed his own such as Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows (2007). He also programmed with Bruce Goldstein a repertory series at Film Forum on 1970s American films before joining the Film Society of Lincoln Center as an associate director programming in 1998. He then joined the selection committee for the New York Film Festival in 2002, and he later succeeded Richard Peña as the director of the New York Film Festival and as the chairman of the festival's selection committee, overseeing his first programming slate in 2013.[1][2] Jones would also be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his scholarly work in 2012.[3]

Jones co-wrote Arnaud Desplechin's film Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian, and though it did screen at the New York Festival, Jones recused himself from the selection process to avoid a conflict of interest.[2] He directed Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015) about François Truffaut's celebrated book on Alfred Hitchcock before making his narrative feature debut with Diane (2018). The following year, the Film Society announced that Jones had decided to step down as the director of the New York Film Festival and as the chairman of the festival's selection committee. Jones would later cite his own ambitions to make more films as the basis for his decision.[4]

Filmography

Film

Year Title Director Writer Notes
1999 My Voyage to Italy No Yes Documentaries
2010 A Letter to Elia Yes Yes
2013 Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian No Yes
2015 Hitchcock/Truffaut Yes Yes Documentary
2018 Diane Yes Yes
2025 Late Fame Yes No

Television

Year Title Director Writer Notes
2004 Lady by the Sea: The Statue of Liberty Yes Yes
2007 Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows Yes Yes
2024 Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints No Yes 8 episodes

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Go Behind the NYFF Scenes with Kent Jones, Its Passionate Chief" (PDF). journalism.nyu.edu. September 27, 2013.
  2. ^ a b c "Movies and Their Making". bombmagazine. September 28, 2017.
  3. ^ "John Simon Guggenheim". 2012.
  4. ^ Cohn, Gabe (September 19, 2019). "The Director of the New York Film Festival Is to Step Down". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 April 2021.

Further reading

  • Physical Evidence: Selected Film Criticism, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 2007.