By Damon Griffin, News Staff

‘For the Love of Movies:’ The Story of American Film Criticism’ was one of more than 100 films that screened at the Independent Film Festival Boston (IFFB) from April 22 to 28. Despite its title, the documentary is not so much an homage to movies as it is an homage to film criticism. But in the festival itself, a love of movies was certainly the primary theme.
The film is a straightforward but ultimately uneventful documentary detailing the history of film criticism as a practice and how it has evolved up to present day. The film is structured through a series of questions, framed in ways like, ‘What qualifies you to be a film critic?’ which was memorably answered by one critic as: ‘Why is Derek Jeter playing shortstop and not the other guy? I got the job, you got the job.” The alternating structural device is simply a timeline, displaying dates and captions headlining the name of the given era.
One thing the film does not profess to be is rich in narrative or imagery; it seems to admit, almost chuckling at itself, ‘Well, what are you gonna do, this is a movie about film critics.’ The lives of critics have never exactly been thrilling subjects for feature films and so the filmmakers have taken a safe stand and created essentially an intricate TV documentary. The film is mostly talking heads and archival photographs, along with some entertaining archival footage from old movies ‘- all of which there should have been more.
The feel of much of the film is this way; it’s intriguing, even humorous, but there could have been more of it. The film could have been more of a critique on film criticism, but it is more of a mannered historical overview. The most interesting observation that it makes is that being called a critic at all is a dubious distinction, that perhaps anybody who watches movies is, at some level, a critic. But it makes this point and then drops it.
Its greatest virtue is that it gives us glimpses of the personalities of critics throughout the 20th century:’ the crassness of Pauline Kael, the wizened seen-it-all nature of Andrew Sarris, the eccentric old-beatnik vibe of Manny Farber, the persistent dorkiness of Ain’t it Cool News’ Harry Knowles.
The most interesting personal aside comes from The New York Times’ film critic Elvis Mitchell, who relates that he went in to film criticism because he felt passionately about movies, and as an African American, he wanted to prove that black Americans had a place in film history. There should be more of this as well.
Still, this is the type of film that only a few festivals, including IFFB, would screen. If, at IFFB, you can see a movie about people who talk about movies, then this is a virtue of the festival as a whole.
The film festival ran for its seventh consecutive year. Films screened at The Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square, the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), The Coolidge Corner Theatre and the Somerville Theatre. The festival has made impressive strides since its inception; this year, films from countries as far as France and Iceland were included in the lineup, as well as films from Boston-based filmmakers.
Documentaries were featured prominently at IFFB. ‘For the Love of Movies’ screened at the ICA April 27. It was directed by an area filmmaker, Gerald Peary, helping the ICA attract a sizable audience for a documentary on the un-sensational subject of film criticism. Peary and producer Amy Geller were in attendance, as was Boston Globe film critic Wesley Morris, who is featured in the film.