AUSTRALIA’S best-known  film critic David Stratton is coming to town on Wednesday for preview screenings at Palace Electric of a new documentary directed by Sally Aitken called “David Stratton: A Cinematic Life”.

The documentary is so hotly anticipated that the first session at 7pm has been sold out. But not to worry, the entrepreneurs are arranging a second screening at 7.15pm before which Stratton will be part of an introductory Q&A.

The film is billed as “an intimate journey with David Stratton, from his first boyhood cinema experience in England, to his migration to Australia as a ‘ten pound pom’ in 1963 and onto his present day reflections on the iconic themes that run through our cinematic legacy.”

Not just that, they say, it’s “very personal and insightful, with the public invited to see a side of David they haven’t seen before.”

At times amusing and at other times serious, the story of Australian cinema is told through Stratton’s gaze, a gaze that actor Geoffrey Rush once called “professorial”.

Rush is just one of many Australian cinematic luminaries who appear in this movie. Others are David Stratton, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Hugo Weaving, Sam Neill, Rachel Griffiths, Eric Bana, Jacki Weaver, Gillian Armstrong, Rachel Perkins, Warwick Thornton and George Miller.

You can watch the trailer at youtube.com/watch?v=uoTbplWKvOg

“David Stratton: A Cinematic Life”, at Palace Electric – 7:.5pm, Wednesday, February 22, (Introductory Q&A only) The film will also release in cinemas on March 9 for a theatrical season.