“My object in life is to unite my avocation and my vocation, as my two eyes are one in sight.”
Robert Frost
My Credo
I begin my resume with a quote from Robert Frost, which pretty much sums up my professional career as dominated by one force, passion for film. This might sound pretentious but, having lived in three different countries (Israel, France, and the U.S.), the only element that has provided stability and continuity in my life, not to speak of excitement, is my love for film, my determination from a very young age to devote my life to the appreciation of movies. After three decades of teaching and writing about film, I still feel as a student, trying to catch up with a medium that’s rapidly changing and continuously reinvents itself.
Working as a film and cultural scholar and critic has been a way of anchoring myself in both the reel and the real world. Whether academic or popular, criticism has been a long, continuous process of planting myself into American–and global–life, a process of transforming myself into an American citizen. It’s therefore no coincidence that most of my books are about uniquely American symbols: John Wayne, the Oscar Award, Small-Town America, the American Independent Cinema.
On the Shoulders of Giant
I did my graduate work (M.Phil and Ph.D.) at Columbia University in the late 1970s, and was the beneficiary of many great scholars in the sociology, philosophy, and film departments; it was truly a Golden Age. For starters, half a dozen members of the sociology department have been presidents of the American Sociological Association (ASA).
General
In 2003, after two decades of writing film reviews for Variety, Screen International, Jerusalem Post, Cinemania, Jewish Journal, Financial Times, Box-Office Magazine, and other publications, I launched www.EmanuelLevy.Com, an on line movie publication and internet movie reviews website. The purpose of the website is to illuminate the making and reception of films through the integration of various spheres (institutions, to use sociological jargon): art, politics, ideology, and business.
Based in L.A., at the heart of Hollywood, the site contains film reviews, analysis, Hollywood news, commentary, interviews, profiles of movie stars and film directors, DVD reviews, coverage of festivals and special events and, last but not least, Oscar predictions and Oscar news.
Press/Media
To request an interview with film critic Emanuel Levy for print, online publication or for TV broadcast, please write to [email protected] and include your telephone and e-mail.
Levy’s Resume
I studied sociology of culture at Columbia University, where I received an M.A. and a Ph.D., at a time when there was M.A. but no doctorate in film studies. I belong to a small group of film scholars who have juggled two careers: teaching and criticism. Over the years, I have taught film at Columbia University, the New School of Social Research, Wellesley College, Arizona State University, UCLA Film School, and visiting positions at Columbia Film School and most recently at NYU Cinema Studies.
As a film critic, I had a prominent voice at Variety (and Daily Variety), the bible of showbiz, for which I wrote throughout the 1990s, from 1990 to 2001. I then assumed the position of chief film critic for Screen International, which I left to pursue more serious scholarship and to establish www.EmanueLLevy.com–Cinema 24/7
Reflecting the dual, often schizophrenic nature of the film medium itself, as an art form and mass entertainment, I vacillate in my research and writings between different styles for different publications, ranging from the most popular or industry oriented to the most academic and esoteric.
Books
My nine film books include:
And the Winner Is: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards (1986);
George Cukor, Master of Elegance: The Legendary Director and His Stars (William Morrow, 1994);
John Wayne: Prophet of the American Way Life (1988, paperback 1998)
Small-Town America in Film: The Fall and Decline of Community (1991);
All Abut Oscar: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards (2003, 11th edition)
Vincente Minnelli: Hollywood’s Dark Dreamer, the first biography of the legendary, Oscar-winning director (2009).
Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film
Cinema of Outsiders, the first comprehensive chronicle of the American Independent Cinema, was published by NYU Press in hard cover in 1999 and in paperback in 2001. Highly acclaimed, the book, a finalist for the National Book Award, quickly became a textbook in over 40 film schools across the country. Still in press, the book is now in its 11th or 12th printing.
Cinema of Outsiders was on the Best-Seller list of the L.A. Times for several weeks. In a recent survey of NYU Press, Cinema of Outsiders was selected as the most popular film book in the 100 year history of that prestigious press.
Citizen Sarris: American Film Critic
All About Oscar: History and Politics of the Academy Awards
All About Oscar: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards, was published in a new, expanded version in 2003 to commemorate Oscar’s 75th anniversary. First published in 1986 under the title of And the Winner Is, the book has been in print for 28 years and still going strong.
It has taken five years of research and writing to complete Vincente Minnelli: Hollywood’s Dark Dreamer (2009), the first biography of the legendary Broadway and Oscar-winning Hollywood director (An American in Paris, Gigi).
My latest book, Gay Directors/Gay Films is my most ambitious and personal one, centering on five contemporary filmmakers: Pedro Almodovar, Terence Davies, Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, and John Waters.
Gay Directors, Gay Films? By Emanuel Levy (Columbia University Press, August 2015).
Though it is not about him, Gay Directors/Gay Films is my tribute to my late companion, the great Rob Remley, former Merce Cunningham dancer and New Line/Time Warner executive, who passed away in 2011. Columbia University Press, which launched my writing acreer back in 1980, is publishing the book in April 2015.
I am working on a new book, Michael Moore and the New American Documentaries, that will account for the recent popularity of non-fiction films vis-a-vis the broader socio-political contexts.
I have contributed to the Los Angeles Times as well as other newspapers, and have appeared on ABC’s Nightline, NPR, PBS, CNN, NBC, FOX TV, the Sundance Channel, and National Public Radio. Other related activities include participation in a number of documentaries and commentaries on several DVD editions, including Fellini’s City of Women and Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.
Of the numerous panels I have moderated at various international festivals, I am particularly proud of those dealing with the New Hollywood, the American Independent Cinema, Women in Film, Globalization Vs. National Cinemas, Politics and American Film in the post-9/11 era.
As it happens, I am the only critic in the U.S. to belong to all five film critics groups: the National Society of Film Critics (NSFC); the Los Angeles Film Critics association (LAFCA), of which I was president for two years, 1997-1999; the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA); the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA); and the International Federation of Film Critics (Fipresci).
According to a recent poll, I am the only critic in the U.S. who has served on 46 film festival juries, including San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Dallas, and Palm Springs. Most recently, I was a member on the grand juries of the Montreal, Taormina, Locarno, Shanghai, and Venice International Film Festivals, and on the Fipresci jury at Cannes at its golden anniversary, in 1997. In 2003, as a member of the Dramatic Jury at Sundance, I was honored to be in the company of Tilda Swinton, Steve Buscemi, Forest Whitaker, and David O. Russell.
In 2004, I had the honor of serving on the Hawaii International Film Festival with two actors I admire: Maggie Cheung (“In the Mood for Love”) and Aussie David Wenham(“Lord of the Rings”). Last year, I served on the grand jury of the Rome Film Festival with my colleague Michel Ciment of the French magazine Positif.
To experience the joy of introducing films to live, often-young audiences, I have programmed film societies and festivals, among which I am particularly proud of the ASU Film Society, which showed a film every Friday throughout the 1990s.
In 1999, I established and directed the Scottsdale Independent Film Festival, an operation that ran for three years and show highlights from Sundance as well as other indies, until I relocated to L.A. During that time, two major figures, Gena Rowlands and Robert Altman, received career achievement awards from the Scottsdale Council of the Arts.
Samuel Butler once observed that, “Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.”
In that spirit, I hope that my lecturing, scholarship, and criticism, though expressing personal and subjective voice, will also be relevant to many other spectators who love movies and want to know more about them.
My Life as a Juror: 68 International Film Festivals, 1985-Present
Venues (A to Z)
AFI Film Fest: 2
Beijing Film Fest: 1
Cannes Film Fest: 5
1987: 40th anniversary
1997: 50th anniversary
2007: 60th anniversary
2017: 70th anniversary
2022: 75the anniversary: My 60th jury
Children Film Fest: 3
Cinema for Peace (ongoing)
Dallas USA Film Fest: 4
Dubai Film Fest: 1
Gotham Awards: 3
Haifa Film Fest (Israel): 1
Hamptons Film Fest: 2
Hawaii Film Fest:1
Independent Spirit Awards: Multiple times
Jerusalem (Israel) Film Fest: 1
Locarno: 1
Los Angeles Film Fest: 3
Maui Film Fest: 1
Miami Film Fest: 1
Montreal Worls Cinema Fest: 1
OutFest (LA): 3
Palm Beach Film Fest: 1
Palm Springs Film Fest: 4
Paris: Fashion and Film Fest: 1
Provincetown Film Fest: 2
Roma Film Fest: 1
San Francisco Fest: 2
Sant Francisco Hay (Frameline) Fest: 2
Santa Barbara Film Fest: 2
Seattle Film Fest: 2
Shanghai Film Fest: 1
Sofia (Bulgaria) Film Fest: 1
Sundance Film Fest: 1
Toronto Film Fest: 2
Tribeca Film Fest: 2
SXSW: 2
Taormina Film Fest: 1
Turino Film Fest: 1
Las Vegas Film Fest: 1
Venice: 2
