He was born in Chihuahua, the Capital city of that northern State of Mexico, on December 23 (1928). He studied Spanish Literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in the first years of the fifties. Later, between 1954-1960, he went to Paris where he studied at the IDHEC (Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques. Back in Mexico, he taught at the faculty of Political Sciences (UNAM) and was founder, along with Carlos Velo, of the CCC (Center for Cinematographic Studies). He wrote three books: "French cinema aspects" 1964; contemporaneous" (Cinema and contemporary man, with a Carlos Fuentes foreword) 1962 and "Al pie de la imagen: criticisms and essays", 1968. Also, there's a posthumous book called "A new culture of the image: essays on cinema and television ". This book contains a group of essays about cinema and TV and was published in 1994. Manuel Michel had two sons, Hugo (1970) and Guillaume (1972). He died on January 7th 1983 in Mexico City.