ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a selection of film critics circles from the United States and Australia, focusing particularly on instances of competing circles within the individual nation, and contextualises these within international and specifically European traditions. For the geographically isolated critic, FIPRESCI juries are an especially important opportunity to personally attend international film festivals and make networks of contacts outside of the limited sphere of their own city, state, and nation. Despite the rhetoric employed by competing film critics circles, the distinctions between these can often seem negligible in practice, particularly if we are to take the outcomes of their annual awards as the measure of their critical ethics. When examining the divergences between the Broadcast Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Circle it is tempting to imagine that each organisation represents irreconcilably different understandings of what a "film critic" is.
