David Stratton
Australian film critic
David Stratton's AcademicInfluence.com Rankings
Download Badge
Philosophy
Why Is David Stratton Influential?
(Suggest an Edit or Addition)According to Wikipedia, David James Stratton is an English-Australian award-winning film critic, as both a journalist and interviewer, film historian and lecturer and television personality and producer. 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 films. He attended Chafyn Grove School from 1948 to 1953 as a boarder. 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.
