Olivier Barlet was born in Paris in 1952. He has translated a number of books on Africa and of African authors, and is also the author of different books himself. He is a member of the Syndicat français de la critique de cinéma and has been a film correspondant for Africa international, Afrique-Asie and Continental. He was 1997-2004 chief editor of Africultures and writes now reviews and articles for Afriscope magazine and Africultures journal and website (africultures.com). He collaborated to the creation of the African Federation of film critics (africine.org) and has run lots of workshops on film criticism in Africa. He was in charge of the Images plurielles collection on cinema for L'Harmattan Publishing House. With the afrimages.net website, scholars and film critics publish analysis on african films. He also participate to the programmation of the African film festival of Apt and of the Docmonde part on tenk.fr
His book entitled "Les Cinémas d'Afrique noire : le regard en question", which won the Prix Art et Essai 1997 from the Centre national de la Cinématographie, has been published in the collection and has been translated into English under the title "African Cinemas, Decolonizing the Gaze" (Zed Books, London, 2000), as well as into German and Italian. His last book, "Les Cinémas d'Afrique des années 2000  : perspectives critiques"  (L'Harmattan, Paris, 2012) has been published in english (Contemporary African Cinema, Michigan State University Press, August 2016) and in arabic (Luxor African Film Festival, 2019) and spanish (Cine africano contemporáneo - Perspectivas críticas, Catarata ediciones, Madrid, 2021) and into arabic by the Luxor African Film Festival (Egypt). Curriculum vitae. Links to the articles (also in english) on les archives d'Afrimages