Richard Leonard, SJ
Melbourne - Charter Member - SIGNIS - Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
A Jesuit priest, author, educator, and film critic, Rev. Dr. Richard Leonard, SJ directs the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting. He along with his staff represent Australia in SIGNIS’s circle of film critics, and he was instrumental in expanding Catholic Film Critics globally. The ICFCA welcomes him as one of its charter members.
Father Richard’s reviews are featured in all the major Australian Catholic newspapers. He has served on juries at the Venice, Berlin, Hong Kong, Montreal, Brisbane and Melbourne International Film Festivals. He is also a member of the Australian Catholic Media Council.
He has authored many books. The Mystical Gaze of the Cinema: The Films of Peter Weir and Movies That Matter: Reading Film Through the Lens of Faith are his film books. He has also written Where the Hell is God?; Beloved Daughters: 100 Years of Papal Teaching About Women; and Preaching to the Converted Throughout the Sundays and Feastdays of the Year.
His lectures in cinema and theology have brought him across Australia and the Pacific, Asia, the UK, and the US. He lectures at the United Faculty of Theology and has been a visiting lecturer in Australian cinema at the University of Melbourne. In 2003 he was a visiting scholar within the School of Theatre, Film and Television at UCLA. Three times, the Gregorian University in Rome invited Father Leonard as a visiting professor. Since 2007 he has been an honorary fellow of the Australian Catholic University.
Born at Warwick, Queensland, having grown up in Toowoomba, Father Leonard has undergraduate degrees in arts, education and theology, as well as a masters degree in systematic theology. After ordination to the priesthood in 1993, he was apprenticed to Albert Street Productions where he wrote, produced and directed documentary films for Australian television.
He is based in Melbourne.
-
Read his reviews at the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting.