Armond White

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Armond White (born in Detroit, Michigan) is one of America's leading film critics and has been the chairman of the "New York Film Critics Circle" since the mid-1990s. Known as one of the many "Paulettes" (acolytes of Pauline Kael), White made his reputation as a critic who shares many of Kael's enthusiasms, though he has established his own individual critical voice. He currently writes for New York Press.

1 Career
2 Books
3 Favorite directors
4 Controversy
5 External links

[edit] Career

Originally making his mark as a critic for the black-owned New York-based weekly newspaper, The City Sun, White, himself an African-American, quickly established a persona as a fearless critic of filmmakers who he thought sullied the black American experience, including Eddie Murphy and Spike Lee. At the same time, he also exposed The City Sun's primarily black readership to the esoteric work of such film directors as Jean-Luc Godard, Terence Davies, and musicians such as Morrissey, The Pet Shop Boys and Erasure. With his wide-spread, eclectic taste in multiple art forms, White became the subject of much media dispute and reader fascination.

As a curator and lecturer, White has been commissioned by the Film Society of Lincoln Center to present a yearly show of the best in music videos and discuss their directors as part of the Society's annual Video Festival. Since 1993, White's program has been the festival's most popular, receiving invitations for presentations in several such international venues as Tokyo and Mexico City. In books, esays and lectures, White has made the case for the music video being one of the most significant postmodern art forms.

[edit] Books

Two books about popular culture are authored by White:

The Resistance: Ten Years of Pop Culture That Shook the World, published in 1995
Rebel for the Hell of It: The Art-Life of Tupac Shakur, published in 1996

The former of these is an underground favorite of some film and music enthusiasts. Meanwhile, "Tupac Shakur", which seriously criticizes the rap star's naivete and thug reputation, has remained a bestseller to this day^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Favorite directors

As a film scholar, White is best known for his support of such directors as Steven Spielberg, Brian DePalma, Robert Altman and André Téchiné. He generally dismisses mainstream critical favorites like Todd Haynes, Jim Jarmusch, Michael Mann, and Lars Von Trier. White's reviews stand out for their numerous references to standard-bearing "classic" directors such as D.W. Griffith, Carl Dreyer, Fritz Lang, Jean Renoir, and Jean-Luc Godard. He has also hailed little-known African filmmaker Ousmane Sembène of Senegal, and the American filmmakers Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep) and Charles Stone III (Mr. 3000, Drumline, and Paid in Full).

[edit] Controversy

Many mainstream critics accuse White of contradicting the grain of mainstream criticism only to provoke debate^{[citation needed]}. He frequently praises films that almost all other critics have drubbed, such as Little Man, Sahara and Against the Ropes. He often focuses a large portion of his reviews to attacks on the critical establishment. In 2002, he listed Artificial Intelligence: A.I. as his favorite all-time movie[1]. He is also frequently accused as being an aggressive pop culture writer who tries to lend intellectual legitimacy to commercial junk.

In 2003, White caused great controversy when his article, "Their Souls for a Freebie"[2], was printed on the front page of New York Press. The broadside attacked the questionable motives of national film critics who sided with the Hollywood film industry's protest against the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ban against distributing DVDs and VHS screeners of movies during the year-end award season.

MPAA president Jack Valenti saluted White's lonely stance, saying "I'd like to embrace you warmly." Other critics bristled at White's in-house criticism.