I have a project that was publicly released online, for open access, on 26 July 2017: my website Film Critic: Adrian Martin (filmcritic.com.au) It is, essentially, a collection of my film reviews and short essays written over a period of almost 40 years, in many different styles and originally for many sorts of publications and occasions (newspapers, radio, specialist magazines, unpublished notes, online journals, classroom handouts, etc) in many countries of the world. In fact, I have been working on this website, on and off with various collaborators, for about 20 of those 40 years. It currently contains over 2,000 reviews, but there are at least 1,000 more that are ready to be entered into the site. In its tone and ambition, the project could be compared to Jonathan Rosenbaum’s website of his critical writings.

Who am I? Some people reading this will be familiar my work as a film critic, or perhaps some part of my varied career. I lived and worked (as a writer and teacher) in Australia until the end of 2012. I began writing and researching about film in my teens, and first appeared in print at age 19, in a 1979 issue of Cinema Papers magazine. During the 1980s and 1990s I wrote, mainly, for many Australian magazines (most of these, especially from the pre-digital era, very hard to access now), covering cinema, art, pop culture, sometimes music or literature; but I also began to appear beyond Australia in places like Sight and Sound (UK), Film Comment (USA) and Trafic (France). From my teenage days, I have always tried to combine the evaluation of individual films with a consideration of larger contexts and ideas.

Between 1995 and 2006 I was one of the film reviewers on the Melbourne newspaper The Age and, from 1995 to 1997, I presented “The Week in Film” on ABC Radio National. These last two media jobs alone are the source of thousands of unpublished film review texts by me. Since the end of the 1990s, I have written a great deal for (sometimes ephemeral) Internet sites. I may also be known, to some of you, for my work providing around 50 audio commentaries for DVD and Blu-ray releases of classic films from Criterion, Arrow, Olive, Masters of Cinema, the British Film Institute and Madman (Australia). Through all these years, I have diligently preserved and digitised my original manuscripts of almost everything I have done, often longer and more detailed than the published or broadcast versions.

These days, living in Europe, I am a freelancer; I no longer teach anywhere, and I have no regular, salaried ‘gig’ as a film reviewer. But I am still very much involved with film criticism and film culture. As anyone who leads a freelance life well knows, the top priority is always the next looming deadline, and the next hopeful payment. It is increasingly difficult for me to devote time to pure ‘labour of love’ projects – and that is why I have always had to put off releasing this website, until now.

So this is what I seek your help and support for, via Patreon: not to initially build the website (that has already been done, thanks to my faithful, tireless Webmaster, the Australian filmmaker Bill Mousoulis) but to maintain it on a regular basis, and continually add to it, not only with old pieces, but new ones as well. For that, I need some time and energy that will not be a ‘waste’; I need the website itself to be a help in earning a (very) modest, freelance living. For this support via Patreon, I am offering exclusive Rewards that comprise 5 books in PDF form, ranging from 85 to 95 pages each, featuring long essays (written between 1981 and now) by me that are either unpublished, or extremely hard to access in print (and which will not be ever included on the website itself), on topics ranging from cinephilia and film criticism to surrealism and film theory.

But also note: below the threshold of the first Reward, you can simply contribute anything from $1 to $19 per month, just to support this ongoing project - click BECOME A PATRON to see this option listed.

I am therefore asking you to support the ongoing future of the Film Critic: Adrian Martin website – and the ongoing future of this particular film critic, Adrian Martin, talking to you right now!