Jones, Kent 1960-

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Jones, Kent 1960-

PERSONAL:

Born 1960; raised in western Massachusetts. Education: Attended McGill University and New York University, c. 1981.

CAREER:

Film critic. Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York, NY, associate director of programming; Film Comment magazine, New York, NY, editor-at-large. New York Film Festival selection committee, permanent member; Cahiers du Cinéma magazine, American correspondent.

WRITINGS:

L'Argent, British Film Institute (London, England), 1999.

(With others) My Voyage to Italy (screenplay), Cappa Production, 2002.

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

Contributor to The Hidden God; frequent contributor to Bookforum and Cinemascope. Editor-at-large for Film Comment magazine.

SIDELIGHTS:

Kent Jones is an editor-at-large for Film Comment magazine, where his writing first appeared in 1996. As an editor, he has given the magazine's scope a more diverse approach to popular films. A correspondent for the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, Jones also contributes to Bookforum, Artforum, and Cinemascope. He collaborated with Martin Scorsese in writing several documentaries, including My Voyage to Italy. Jones also serves as the associate director of programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and is a permanent member of the Selection Committee for the New York Film Festival.

Jones's most notable book is Physical Evidence: Selected Film Criticism, a collection of his writings on films, filmmakers, Hollywood film culture, and several prominent critics. A reviewer writing for Publishers Weekly commented that "Jones expertly walks the line between academia and pop culture without sacrificing insight into either approach." Although Andrew Tracy, reviewing the book for Cineaste, labeled the book "a trifle uninspired," he further noted: "What this volume does accomplish is to condense the pleasures of Jones's prose and perceptiveness into a brisk and ceaselessly enjoyable package."

Jones has drawn praise for his straightforward treatment of directors, films, and cinematic movements. Tracy, for example, indicated that "Jones continually upholds what should be the first, and formative, question for all criticism: what exactly are we looking at?" In his writing, Jones often advances the theory that films are the "physical evidence" of the struggles a filmmaker must negotiate in producing a given work. He notes early on in Physical Evidence that he believes that "a given director's films are, among other things, a series of responses to the immediate filmmaking environment."

Tracy admired the clarity of Jones's prose: "It helps … that Jones is one of the most readable of contemporary critics, rarely letting rhetorical posturing interfere with the sharp and clean lines of his writing. … Readability, of course, does not denote simplicity; rather, the intricacy and clarity of Jones's thought come through all the greater by their honing into precise and graceful language." In conclusion, Tracy wrote that Jones's critiques were "presented with scrupulous fairness, minimizing drive-by derogations for systematic and judicious consideration."