Olivier Barrot

About Olivier Barrot

Olivier Barrot’s love for culture manifests early in his professional life, as he becomes a cultural facilitator in charge of cinema at the Maison de la Culture de Créteil at the age of twenty, a position he holds for 8 years. It is in this context that he creates the Cinécures. In 1975 and 1976, he is responsible for the Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival.

It is in 1979 that Olivier Barrot enters the television world, as a producer at Gaumont, at SFP, and at International TVD. In 1981, he becomes head of the co-productions department at TF1, before taking over the management of the company Images Ordinateurs (IO) in 1983. The publisher Calmann-Lévy hires him in 1985 as a literary advisor, a position he later holds at Jean-Claude Lattès between 1989 and 1994. From 1980 onwards, Olivier Barrot collaborates as a journalist for the ‘Books’ and ‘Travel’ sections of the newspaper Le Monde, and on Canal + for the shows Demain (between 1988 and 1990), and La Grande Famille (between 1990 and 1992).

Since 1991, Olivier Barrot has been producing and presenting the daily three-minute literary mini-magazine ‘A Book, A Day’ on France 3. In 2009, the 4000th episode is celebrated; and the same year, he creates ‘A Book Always’, a weekly show dedicated to pocket-sized books. Olivier Barrot also produces and presents the weekly ‘Vice-Versa’ on France 24 (in English).

Olivier Barrot has also been a lecturer at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris since 2008, where he teaches a course titled ‘Culture, a State Affair’ and then ‘Readings of Paris’. He teaches cinema and theater at the University of Montreal, and literature at New York University at ‘La Maison Française’, where he invites a French writer each month (‘French Literature in the making’). Since 2009, he has been hosting a master class at the Comédie-Française, ‘Actors’ Schools’ at the Vieux Colombier.

Olivier Barrot is the author of around forty works on cinema, theater, travel, and literature, as well as several series of television films. Among his recent publications: ‘The Lost Son’ (Gallimard, 2012), ‘All Fire, All Flame’ (Cahiers du Cinéma, 2012), ‘La Revue blanche’ (with Pascal Ory, La Table Ronde, 2012).