University of Pittsburgh Annual Lecture 2014

“Richard Roud: critic, curator, author”
Michael Temple presents “Decades Never Start on Time”
Friday, 28 November 2014 from 18:00 to 21:00 

In this talk Michael Temple presented “Decades Never Start on Time”, the anthology of Richard Roud’s critical writings that has just been published by BFI Publishing.

Arriving from Boston in the mid-1950s, Roud (1929-1989) became a programmer at the National Film Theatre and the London Film Festival, before going on to be director of the New York Film Festival, chief film critic for the Guardian, a regular contributor to Sight & Sound, and the author of several important film books such as his monograph on Jean-Luc Godard and his biography of Henri Langlois, A Passion for Film.
The anthology Decades Never Start on Time includes significant amounts of previously unpublished material as well as selections from Roud’s published writings in various newspapers, magazines and books.
The story of Roud’s multifaceted career and personal journey through the film culture of the 1960s and 1970s is an important episode in the history of film criticism and the history of film festivals.