Mansel Stimpson
FILM CRITIC
Mansel Stimpson is a life-long lover of cinema who first wrote reviews for the British Federation of Film Societies and has long been chair of the Eastbourne Film Society. As a professional reviewer he soon began to contribute to several sources. The longest lasting of these at that time was for the listings magazine What’s On In London to which he contributed for some twenty years right up to its closure. In addition to his reviewing he wrote many articles for them and interviewed numerous directors including such great figures of the past as Bertolucci, Chabrol, Terence Davies, Tavernier and Agnès Varda alongside the likes of Todd Haynes, Wim Wenders and Aki Kaurismäki.
During this time he wrote also for the London weekly Capital Gay, that being between 1988 and 1995, and thereafter reviewed films each month for the magazine Gay Times until 2002. In the case of the former he reviewed books also and did interviews. For them his interviewees included Pedro Almodóvar, Gregg Araki and Rupert Everett. From 2007 to 2015 he was chief reviewer and co-editor of the Film Review annual. For a period of five years he also prepared and introduced screenings at London’s National Film Theatre, hosting discussions with the audience afterwards.
Aside from cinema, Mansel’s other great love is classical music and he has a special interest in the work of Benjamin Britten. For a decade from 2002 he did regular interviews at London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and singers, conductors and directors were amongst the many interviewees. These pieces were initially for What’s On In London and then for the website Classical Source. Other articles of his on the subject of Britten’s music also appeared. These were in Musical Opinion, Tempo and, most prestigiously of all, the American publication The Opera Quarterly. The latter included his article on Drama and Meaning in The Turn of the Screw in an edition devoted to Britten in 1986.
Mansel has been a member of the London Film Critics’ Circle since 1990 and published his memoir No Drum to Beat in 2014.
Read Mansel’s Latest Reviews
Why I Became a Film Critic
by Mansel Stimpson, Film Review
I became a film critic because I was born to be one. I was eleven years old before I started to go to the cinema regularly but I immediately fell in love with it, read film magazines and began in an entirely childlike way to write reviews of what I saw – only a sentence or two at first but nevertheless an attempt to emulate what I found in the magazines and newspapers. As a pupil at Eastbourne College I wrote reviews for a school magazine and, when I left, I immediately joined the Eastbourne Film Society and soon provided programme notes for them. To share and pass on my enthusiasm for individual titles that readers might not otherwise have seen has always been a vital part of my aims as a critic.
I have been involved with the Society ever since and joining it also led to my writing criticism for the British Federation of Film Societies. Professional reviewing followed for various publications starting with What’s On in London to which I contributed regularly from 1987 to 2007. Prior to that I had not anticipated that being a critic would be more than a hobby, albeit a passionate one. Furthermore, in my youth I would never have imagined that I would one day become a member of the London Critics’ Circle and be writing professionally and continually for well over 30 years. For that matter I never anticipated that for five years or so I would prepare and introduce screenings at London's National Film Theatre and hold discussions with the audience afterwards.
In short, I never chose to be a film critic: it chose me.