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Jonathan Rosenbaum

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Jonathan Rosenbaum is a film critic and author whose books include “Movies as Politics,” “Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Movies We Can See,” “Abbas Kiarostami” (co-authored with Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa), “Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia,” and the two-volume collection “Cinematic Encounters.” He was the film critic for the Chicago Reader from 1987 to 2008.

Latest from Jonathan Rosenbaum

Why Jafar Panahi’s Best Films Are Largely Unknown

Why Jafar Panahi’s Best Films Are Largely Unknown

One of Iranian cinema’s greatest and most exemplary figures — and one of the world’s finest filmmakers — deserves to be appreciated not simply for his courage as a rebel but for his talent and imagination in showing what the best filmmaking entails.

Jonathan Rosenbaum
The Moral Affirmations of Louis Armstrong

The Moral Affirmations of Louis Armstrong

Many of Louis Armstrong’s contemporaries derided his performance antics and clowning as a creepy form of Uncle Tomism. But what if the most effective way to be political without creating a disturbance is to pretend you have no politics at all?

Jonathan Rosenbaum
A Film Critic Reflects on the Artistic Journeys and Vision of the Late French Director Jean-Luc Godard

A Film Critic Reflects on the Artistic Journeys and Vision of the Late French Director Jean-Luc Godard

Godard and his critical colleagues comprised the first generation of cinephiles who treated film history as part of cultural history.

Jonathan Rosenbaum