Long before he became a household name as a film reviewer on television, David Stratton was a passionate supporter of Australian cinema and opponent of censorship as longtime director of the Sydney Film Festival.
The co-host with Margaret Pomeranz of SBS's The Movie Show then the ABC's At The Movies for more than 25 years has been appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for service to the film industry as a critic and as a promoter and ambassador for Australian cinema.
"It's a great honour," Stratton says. "I feel conscious of the fact that I've had a career that I've enjoyed very much."
The author of two books on Australian film and an autobiography adds that compared to many deserving recipients of Australia Day honours, including doctors, nurses, teachers and refugee advocates, he feels he has had it "fairly easy".
Now 75, Stratton describes his time reviewing movies on television as "the most amazing journey" until it finished late last year.
"When we started out, we were trying to fill a gap because there was no program on Australian television that on a week-by-week basis looked at and reviewed all the new films," he says.
"I would have had no idea that this very, very low-budget TV program on SBS, a channel that supposedly very few people watched, would lead to what it led to – we seem to have become some sort of cultural icon."
Stratton is proud of helping challenge film censorship in the late 1960s and early 1970s – "it was a long and bitter battle" – playing a role in drawing attention to the history of Australian cinema and promoting new Australian films at the SFF. Then, at SBS, he had the chance to introduce audiences to high-quality international cinema.
