Moviegoers of UT will get the chance to personally pick the brain of a film critic and director this week.
Gerald Peary will be on campus for a screening of his documentary “For the Love of Movies” Monday and an open discussion Tuesday.
As a film critic of more than 30 years, Peary set out to create a documentary that would inspire audiences to read more film criticism. However, “For the Love of Movies” was made throughout the course of many years, and because of the rise of the internet, things changed.
“Suddenly there were hundreds of critics,” Peary said. “Everyone is a critic (on the internet). Newspapers started shutting down and firing critics. Now (the documentary) is more of a eulogy to the end of film criticism. It still has all the critics, but it becomes clear that film criticism is dying out.”
The fall of newspaper critics is something Peary can personally attest to. His newspaper, the Boston Phoenix, “died” and now his voice of criticism is online at The Arts Fuse, an online, Boston-based arts magazine.
Although Peary agreed that it is nice that everyone is able to have a voice online, he said the voice of credibility is virtually gone. He said it now requires much more research to find a professional critic, and most people are not willing to do that research. Chuck Maland, head of UT’s cinema studies program, however, does his research and sees the internet as a helpful tool.
“With Rotten Tomatos and Metacritic.com, you can go to see, in a very general, broad sense, how positive the reviews of certain films have been by newspaper reviewers,” Maland said. “Not only that, but you can go to the reviews of certain people. All the way through my career I’ve usually tried to find some reviewers whose work I like and trust.”
On the list of Maland’s reviewers is Peary. Maland pointed out that Peary’s documentary chronologically discusses American film criticism and the way it has shaped American film, which is something a reviewer must understand to fully critique a film.
“Every critic is a reviewer. Only some reviewers are critics,” Peary said. “Reviewers talk about plot and actors. Is it good or not? That’s where criticism starts. A critic contextualizes, knows how to put it next to other films of the time, films in history, knows theme, philosophy, history, literature.”
This distinction is something Peary hopes to leave with viewers of “For the Love of Movies.” Among the film critics highlighted in the film are Robert E. Sherwood, Otis Ferguson and Knoxville’s own James Agee.
“When I was 16, I read one of Agee’s reviews and it completely changed my life,” Peary said. “I was moved by how beautiful film criticism can be.”
The screening of “For the Love of Movies” starts Monday at 3:30 p.m. in Hodges Library Auditorium. The open discussion with Peary is Tuesday from noon to 1 p.m. in the Mary Greer Room on the second floor of Hodges.
