David Sterritt

Last updated
David Sterritt
Sterritt.jpg
David Sterritt
Born (1944-09-11) September 11, 1944 (age 79)
United States
Occupation(s) Film critic, author, scholar
Partner Mikita Brottman
Jean-Luc Godard Interviews; one of Sterritt's most notable works Godardinterviews.jpg
Jean-Luc Godard Interviews; one of Sterritt's most notable works

David Sterritt (born September 11, 1944) is a film critic, author and scholar. He is most notable for his work on Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard, and his many years as the Film Critic for The Christian Science Monitor , [1] where, from 1968 until his retirement in 2005, he championed avant garde cinema, theater and music. He has a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University and is the Chairman of the National Society of Film Critics. [2]

Contents

Sterritt has also written influentially on the film and culture of the 1950s, the Beat Generation, French New Wave cinema, Robert Altman, Spike Lee and Terry Gilliam, and the TV series, The Honeymooners .

Sterritt participated in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll, where he listed his ten favorite films as follows: 2001: A Space Odyssey , Antonio das Mortes , Au Hasard Balthazar , The Crowd , Out 1: Spectre , A Page of Madness , Vagabond , Vertigo , Wavelength , and A Woman Under the Influence . [3]

Career

Sterritt began his career as a film critic at Boston After Dark (now the Boston Phoenix ), where he was Chief Editor. He then moved to The Christian Science Monitor, where he worked as the newspaper's Film Critic and Special Correspondent. [1] During his tenure at the Monitor, Sterritt held a number of additional appointments. From 1978-1980 he was the Film Critic for All Things Considered , on National Public Radio. From 1969 to 1973, he was the Boston Theater Critic for Variety, and he sat on the selection committee for the New York Film Festival from 1988 to 1992. Between 1994 and 2002 he was Senior Critic at the National Critics Institute of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, and he served as the video critic for Islands magazine from 2000-2003. From 2005-2007 he was Programming Associate at the Makor/Steinhardt Center of the 92nd Street Y. He is a member of the National Editorial Advisory Group of Tikkun, is the Editor in Chief of Quarterly Review of Film and Video , and the Chief Book Critic for Film Quarterly .

Sterritt's writings on film and film culture have also appeared in MovieMaker in an article about independent film, [4] Senses of Cinema in an article about Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, [5] Cinéaste in an article about French filmmaker Alain Renais, [6] and Beliefnet in an article about Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds . [7]

In 1998 Sterritt edited a book of interviews and conversations with Godard by critics, scholars, and journalists, from the 1960s to the 1990s, illuminating the filmmaker's life, work, and ideas. [1]

Sterritt is particularly well known for his careful considerations of films with a spiritual connection, such as Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004). [8] [9] According to Sterritt, "Scorsese has worshiped at two altars throughout his adult life: the altar of Christianity and the altar of cinema." [8] In 2004 CNN quoted Sterritt about Gibson's controversial film, which some people protested due its troubling portrayal of Jews, as saying the film "certainly leaves the door open for anybody who comes in already contaminated with the germs of anti-Semitism. This will feed those germs." [9]

From 1999-2015 Sterritt was the Co-Chair, with William Luhr, of the Columbia University Seminar on Cinema and Interdisciplinary Interpretation. He is currently on the Film Studies Faculty at Columbia University's Graduate Film Division, and Adjunct Faculty at the Maryland Institute College of Art in the Department of Language, Literature and Culture and the Department of Art History. He is also Distinguished Visiting Faculty in the Goldring Arts Journalism Program at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and Professor Emeritus of Theater and Film at Long Island University, [1] where he taught from 1993 to 2005, obtaining tenure in 1998.

Personal life

Sterritt is the partner of psychoanalyst, author and cultural critic Mikita Brottman. They wrote a review together of Gaspar Noé's 2002 French film Irréversible for Film Quarterly. [10]

Books

Related Research Articles

<i>Cahiers du Cinéma</i> French film journal

Cahiers du Cinéma is a French film magazine co-founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs—Objectif 49 and Ciné-Club du Quartier Latin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">François Truffaut</span> French film director (1932–1984)

François Roland Truffaut was a French filmmaker, actor, and critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. With a career of more than 25 years, he is an icon of the French film industry.

Andrew Sarris was an American film critic. He was a leading proponent of the auteur theory of film criticism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Luc Godard</span> French-Swiss film director (1930–2022)

Jean-Luc Godard was a Franco-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as François Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Éric Rohmer, and Jacques Demy. He was arguably the most influential French filmmaker of the post-war era. According to AllMovie, his work "revolutionized the motion picture form" through its experimentation with narrative, continuity, sound, and camerawork. His most acclaimed films include Breathless (1960), Vivre sa vie (1962), Contempt (1963), Band of Outsiders (1964), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), Masculin Féminin (1966), Weekend (1967), and Goodbye to Language (2014).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Bresson</span> French film director (1901–1999)

Robert Bresson was a French film director. Known for his ascetic approach, Bresson contributed notably to the art of cinema; his non-professional actors, ellipses, and sparse use of scoring have led his works to be regarded as preeminent examples of minimalist film. Much of his work is known for being tragic in story and nature.

<i>Breathless</i> (1960 film) 1960 French film by Jean-Luc Godard

Breathless is a 1960 French New Wave crime drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as a wandering criminal named Michel, and Jean Seberg as his American girlfriend Patricia. The film was Godard's first feature-length work and represented Belmondo's breakthrough as an actor.

The New Wave, also called the French New Wave, is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconoclasm. New Wave filmmakers explored new approaches to editing, visual style, and narrative, as well as engagement with the social and political upheavals of the era, often making use of irony or exploring existential themes. The New Wave is often considered one of the most influential movements in the history of cinema.

<i>Vivre sa vie</i> 1962 film by Jean-Luc Godard

Vivre sa vie is a 1962 French New Wave drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The film was released in the United States as My Life to Live and in the United Kingdom as It's My Life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacques Rozier</span> French film director and screenwriter (1926–2023)

Jacques Rozier was a French film director and screenwriter. He was one of the lesser-known members of the French New Wave movement and has collaborated with Jean-Luc Godard. Three of his films have been screened at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1978, he was a member of the jury at the 28th Berlin International Film Festival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luc Moullet</span>

Luc Moullet is a French film critic and filmmaker, and a member of the Nouvelle Vague or French New Wave. Moullet's films are known for their humor, anti-authoritarian leanings and rigorously primitive aesthetic, which is heavily influenced by his love of American B-movies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gene Youngblood</span> American media theorist (1942–2021)

Gene Youngblood was an American theorist of media arts and politics, and a respected scholar in the history and theory of alternative cinemas. His best-known book, Expanded Cinema, was the first to consider video as an art form and has been credited with helping to legitimate the fields of computer art and media arts. He is also known for his pioneering work in the media democracy movement, a subject on which he taught, wrote, and lectured, beginning in 1967.

Cinephilia is the term used to refer to a passionate interest in films, film theory, and film criticism. The term is a portmanteau of the words cinema and philia, one of the four ancient Greek words for love. A person with a passionate interest in cinema is called a cinephile, cinemaphile, filmophile, or, informally, a film buff. To a cinephile, a film is often not just a source of entertainment as they see films from a more critical point of view.

<i>Histoire(s) du cinéma</i> 1998 film by Jean-Luc Godard

Histoire(s) du cinéma is an 8-part video project begun by Jean-Luc Godard in the late 1980s and completed in 1998. The longest, at 266 minutes, and one of the most complex of Godard's films, Histoire(s) du cinéma is an examination of the history of the concept of cinema and how it relates to the 20th century; in this sense, it can also be considered a critique of the 20th century and how it perceives itself. The project is widely considered Godard's magnum opus.

<i>Hollywood Hex</i> 1999 book by Mikita Brottman

Hollywood Hex is a book by Mikita Brottman, an in-depth history of movies plagued with bad luck or perceived as cursed. The book deals with deaths on-set, copycat crimes, obsessed fans, bizarre coincidences, and other incidents which lead a film to be called "cursed".

<i>Meat Is Murder</i> (book)

Meat Is Murder: An Illustrated Guide to Cannibal Culture is a book originally published in 1998, which examines cannibalism in myth, true crime, and film.

Nouvelle Vague is a 1990 French film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It follows the story of hitchhiker Lennox credited as "Lui" ("Him"), taken in by a wealthy industrialist, Elena Torlato-Favrini or "Elle" ("Her"), played by Domiziana Giordano. The film was entered into the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. It has never been released on any home video format in North America, but the audio was issued as a 2CD set by ECM.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mikita Brottman</span>

Mikita Brottman, née Mikita Hoy, is a British American non-fiction author, scholar, and psychologist known for her interest in true crime. Her writing blends a number of genres, often incorporating elements of autobiography, psychoanalysis, forensic psychology, and literary history.

Christopher Robé is a professor in film and media studies at Florida Atlantic University. He has published Left of Hollywood: Cinema, Modernism, and the Emergence of U.S. Radical Film Culture., which resituates such well-known auteurs like Sergei Eisenstein and Jean Renoir in an American political context.,. It also argues that the 1930s proved a vital moment in time regarding the emergence of Left Film Theory,.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Douchet</span> French film critic

Jean Douchet was a French film director, historian, film critic and teacher who began his career in the early 1950s at Gazette du Cinéma and Cahiers du cinéma with members of the future French New Wave.

Robert Phillip Kolker is an American film historian, theorist, and critic. He has authored and edited a number of influential books on cinema and media studies. He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland, College Park.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Sterritt, David, ed. (1998). Jean-Luc Godard: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN   9781578060801 . Retrieved May 12, 2022.
  2. Kay, Jeremy (September 23, 2009). "National Society Of Film Critics to announce winners on January 3, 2010". Screen Daily . Retrieved May 13, 2022.
  3. "The Greatest Films of All Time 2012: David Sterritt". BFI . 2012. Archived from the original on August 18, 2016. Retrieved May 13, 2022.
  4. Sterritt, David (January 15, 2006). "Year of the Indie: Indies, studios and the state of offbeat moviemaking". Moviemaker . Archived from the original on October 18, 2010. Retrieved September 25, 2009.
  5. Sterritt, David (2000). "Taste of Kierostami". Senses of Cinema . Archived from the original on February 8, 2007.
  6. Sterritt, David (Fall 2008). "Four Alain Renais Films on DVD". Cinéaste . Archived from the original on September 28, 2009. Retrieved September 28, 2009.
  7. Sterritt, David (July 2005). "Playing on Our Fears". Beliefnet .
  8. 1 2 O’Brien, Catherine (2018). Martin Scorsese's Divine Comedy: Movies and Religion. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 127–151. Retrieved May 13, 2022.
  9. 1 2 Blitzer, Wolf (February 25, 2004). "Viewers react passionately to Gibson's film". CNN . Retrieved May 13, 2022.
  10. Brottman, Mikita; Sterritt, David. "Review: Irréversible". Film Quarterly . Archived from the original on June 4, 2009. Retrieved June 4, 2009.