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Christine Oestreicher (born 29 October 1940) is a British film producer and director who was awarded an Oscar in 1983 for the film A Shocking Accident, a 1982 short film based on a story by Graham Greene.[1][2]

Christine Oestreicher
Born	29 October 1940
Nationality	British
Occupation	Film producer and director
Awards	Academy Award, 1983

Biography

Christine Oestreicher was born in Somerset, England in 1940. Her mother was Scottish and her father, descended from the Sephardic Jews forced out of Portugal by the Inquisition.

Oestreicher began her film career in 1979 as Production Co-ordinator for the 50-minute documentary Chance, History, Art ... directed by James Scott about the effects of surrealism on the art world. The film was shown at the Edinburgh Film Festival and won the Silver Boomerang prize at the Melbourne International Film Festival.

In 1982, Oestreicher was nominated for an Oscar by the Academy of Motion Pictures as well as a BAFTA by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts for her production of Couples and Robbers (1981), a short film written and directed by Clare Peploe.

In 1983, at the 55th Academy Awards, Oestreicher won the Oscar for her 25-minute comedy, A Shocking Accident, in the “Short Film (Live Action)” category.[1][2] The 1982 film, directed by James Scott, was about a bizarre incident involving a pig falling from a balcony, based on a story by Graham Greene, and was also nominated at the 1983 BAFTAs.[3] In 1984, Oestreicher produced, and James Scott directed, the television drama Every Picture Tells a Story based on the childhood of Scott's famous father, the painter William Scott from a screenplay written by Shane Connaughton.[4]

The screenplay for Samson and Delilah (1984) was adapted from a D.H. Lawrence short story by Mark Peploe who also directed. Co-produced by Oestreicher and James Scott, the film tells a story about a landlady's confrontation with a man who claims to be her long-lost husband. It stars Bernard Hill and Lindsay Duncan and was nominated for a BAFTA award.[5][6]

During the 1980s Oestreicher developed a number of feature films with James Scott and Clare Peploe, including The Darkroom Window, based on the life of photographer Edward Weston, High Season, Dibs in Search of Self and Loser Takes All among others. During this time, she hosted regular meetings at her home of British independent filmmakers, including Derek Jarman, Ron Peck, James Scott and Stephen Frears. In 1987 High Season written and directed by Clare Peploe, was produced by Clare Downs with a Special Thanks credit to Oestreicher.[7] The film starred Jacqueline Bisset, Kenneth Branagh, James Fox and Irene Pappas.[5]

In 1989, Oestreicher produced the comedy, Loser Takes All, (dir. James Scott) in which Robert Lindsay and Molly Ringwald play a penniless couple trying to pay their bills by gambling while waiting for their tycoon benefactor Sir John Gielgud to float into Monte Carlo harbour on his yacht. The film, initially based on the 1955 novella Loser Takes All by Graham Greene, was recut and retitled Strike It Rich by the distributor, Miramax, and included scenes not taken from Greene's story.[8]

In 2001 Oestreicher was the producer and, for the first time,[9] director of a documentary based on the exhibition The Art of Remembering co-curated by Harriet Frazer in which 54 contemporary British letter cutters explore themes of memory and loss.[10][11]

Filmography

• 1979: Chance, History, Art ... (documentary)
• 1981: Couples and Robbers (short film)[12]
• 1982: A Shocking Accident (short film)[12]
• 1984: Every Picture Tells a Story (feature film)[12][13]
• 1984: Samson and Delilah (short film)[14]
• 1985/86: Campaign Film for the British Film Industry (short film)
• 1987: High Season (feature film)
• 1989: Strike it Rich (feature film)[8][15]
• 2001: The Art of Remembering (documentary)[9][10]

Awards and nominations

• 1982: Couples and Robbers, Oscar nomination, BAFTA nomination[16][17]
• 1983: A Shocking Accident, Oscar winner, BAFTA nomination[1][3]
• 1984: Samson and Delilah, BAFTA nomination[6]

References

External links

• A Shocking Accident at IMDb
• Oestreicher's acceptance speech at the 1983 Academy Awards Ceremony

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