It’s late November and the venerable film critic David Stratton is giving his last lesson on world cinema at the University of Sydney’s Centre for Continuing Education. After 35 years of showing up for his students, some of whom have returned this in kind by enrolling for 32 consecutive years, Stratton is not here tonight. At least not in a physical sense.
While he had kept coming to the city from the Blue Mountains through Covid, deteriorating eyesight and more recently a spine fracture, an unexpected month in hospital had really stuck a spoke in his wheels. Four weeks from the course’s scheduled end, Stratton asked the director Claude Gonzalez to step in to take over.
