Michel Ciment (1938-2023) pictured on the wall (shot by Jerry Schatzberg with closed eyes, quite unusual for a film critic) and with Jerry shot by Bruno Chatelin

Michel Ciment au festival Lumière, photo Paul Grandsard

Historic director of “Positif” magazine, he was a juror and expert for the Venice International Film Festival which he followed uninterruptedly from 1964 to 2021.

The President, the General Manager, the Artistic Director of the Cinema Department, the Press Office of La Biennale di Venezia, remember with great affection and deep esteem our friend Michel Ciment, the unforgettable master of French and international film criticism, who passed away yesterday afternoon in his city of Paris. From 1964 until two years ago, with his uninterrupted presence and his human and intellectual example, Michel Ciment honoured the Venice International Film Festival to which he was bound by respect and passion.

The historic director of the prestigious “Positif” magazine, honorary president of Fipresci (the International Federation of Film Critics), who wrote for some of the most influential French periodicals, a university professor, lucid and rigorous essayist, Michel Ciment was a member of the international jury of the Venice Film Festival in 1980 and 1991, and from 1988 to 1990 of a group of experts. In 1997 he curated the retrospective and book produced for the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement awarded to Stanley Kubrick, of whom Michel Ciment was the most important scholar.

One year ago, on July 9^th 2022, Michel Ciment connected online to speak at the seminar celebrating the 90^th anniversary of the Venice Film Festival held in the Library of the Historic Archive of La Biennale. For the historical book La Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica di Venezia 1932-2002 presented on that occasion, the author Gian Piero Brunetta entrusted the “finishing touch” of his chapters to Michel Ciment’s evaluation, whom Brunetta defined, in the conclusion, “a very wise man and long-time devotee of the Venice Film Festival”.