Name David Stratton Role Film critic | Spouse Susie Stratton | |
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Full Name David James Stratton Born 10 September 1939 (age 84) ( 1939-09-10 ) Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England Occupation Film critic (At the Movies) Known for Film critic & television personality Employer Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV shows At the Movies, The Movie Show Awards AACTA Awards - Raymond Longford Award People also search for Ray Riegert, David H Stratton, Mark Scott Books I Peed on Fellini: Recollecti, Terra Northwest, Ultimate Las Vegas and beyo, DK Eyewitness Travel Gu, The last new wave | ||
Art afterhours david stratton film critic
David James Stratton AM (born 10 September 1939) is an English-Australian award-winning film critic, as both a journalist and interviewer, film historian and lecturer and television personality and producer
Contents
- Art afterhours david stratton film critic
- Film critic David Stratton talks about David Stratton A Cinematic Life
- Life and career
- Other appearances
- Honours
- References
Film critic David Stratton talks about David Stratton: A Cinematic Life
Life and career
Born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England in 1939, Stratton was sent to Hampshire to see out the war years with his grandmother, an avid filmgoer, where he was taken to the local cinemas regularly and saw a diverse range of movies. He saw his first foreign film at Bath in 1955 – Italian romantic comedy Bread, Love and Dreams. That was soon followed by Akira Kurosawa's Japanese adventure drama classic Seven Samurai tracked down in Birmingham. At the age of 19, he founded the Melksham and District Film Society. David arrived in Australia in 1963, and soon became involved with the local film society movement. He directed the Sydney Film Festival from 1966 until 1983. At the time, he was the subject of surveillance by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, due to the festival showing Soviet films and his late 1960s visit to Russia. This information was not made public until January 2014.
A highly regarded expert on international cinema, particularly French cinema, Stratton was President of FIPRESCI (International Film Critics) Juries in Cannes (twice) and Venice. He was also a member of the jury at the 32nd Berlin International Film Festival in 1982.
Stratton worked for SBS from 1980, acting as their film consultant and introducing the SBS Cinema Classic and Movie of the Week for 24 weeks a year. From 1986 onwards Stratton co-hosted the long-running SBS TV program The Movie Show with Margaret Pomeranz, who was also the show's original producer. Stratton and Pomeranz left SBS in 2004. From 2004 Stratton and Pomeranz have co-hosted the ABC film show, At the Movies. On 16 September 2014, Stratton and Pomeranz announced they would be retiring at the end of the 2014 series. The ABC confirmed that the series would end with the last episode to be broadcast on 9 December 2014.
Stratton has stated on numerous occasions that his favourite film of all time is Singin' in the Rain. He currently writes reviews for The Australian newspaper and formerly did so for the US film industry magazine Variety. He also does film reviews for TV Week, where he has been for a number of years. He lectures in film history at the University of Sydney's Centre for Continuing Education. In 2008 he released his autobiography called I Peed on Fellini, a reference to a drunken attempt to shake Federico Fellini's hand while using a urinal.
Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz have played an important role in challenging the often heavy-handed decisions of the Australian Classification Office throughout their career.
The documentary film David Stratton: A Cinematic Life, written and directed by Sally Aitken, was released in 2017, and re-edited for television, featuring interviews with Stratton about his life and with actors, directors, producers representing Australian cinema since the 1960s.