David Stratton
| David Stratton | |
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Stratton in 2012
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| Born |
David James Stratton 10 September 1939 Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England |
| Occupation | Film critic (At the Movies) |
| Employer | Australian Broadcasting Corporation |
| Known for | Film critic & television personality |
David James Stratton AM (born 10 September 1939) is an English-Australian film critic and television personality.
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 – the Italian Bread, Love and Dreams. That was soon followed by Akira Kurosawa's Japanese 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.
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