Godfrey Cheshire III (born June 3, 1951) is an American film critic, film writer and director. [1]
He was instrumental in the founding of Raleigh's Spectator Magazine in 1978. He served[ when? ] as chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle. [1]
In 2001 and in 2005, he received three awards for best arts criticism from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. [2] [1]
Cheshire was born and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. His parents are Sis and Buddy Cheshire. He has one brother, Sprague, and a sister, Sugar. He has two nieces, Sarah and Davi, and one nephew, Joe. He lives in New York.
In 2005, he began shooting a documentary named Moving Midway , which shows the effect on his family of the moving of the family's plantation house from a site near a busy road back into the woods and a proper, tranquil setting, and at the same time, the effect on his family of meeting descendants of slaves his family had owned, including those descended from a slave and his great-grandfather. [3]
He was instrumental in the founding of Raleigh's Spectator Magazine in 1978. [1] At that time he began writing film criticism professionally. He moved to New York in 1991, and has written for numerous national and international publications, including The New York Times , Variety , The Village Voice , The New York Press , Interview , Film Comment , Oxford American , the Independent Weekly and RogerEbert.com.
Of special interest to him are cinematic representations of the Southern United States, Iranian film, and the transition from analog to digital technology. [1]
Cheshire participated in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll, where he listed his ten favorite films as follows: 2001: A Space Odyssey , Ali: Fear Eats the Soul , Battleship Potemkin , Close-Up , The Godfather: Part II , Intolerance , A Man Escaped , The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance , The Passion of Joan of Arc , and Rear Window . [4]
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