Christine Oestreicher

In 2021 she returned to a film project she started in 1998 about first-born daughters and first time motherhood that relates to the project she started in 1975 about masculinity and entitlement.

Oestreicher found it incredibly hard to stand up to Weinstein’s bullying and protect her film. At that time such behavior was considered par for the course and a formal complaint would have been unlikely to succeed. However, in 2020, at the time of the MeToo movement, she lodged a statement with AMPAS about the bullying and coercion she underwent and its impact on the film. Her great hope is that, over time, such actions will help put an end to the culture of bullying and foster one that empowers women and other minority groups to thrive and create their best work.

In 2019 she applied for Portuguese citizenship which was granted in 2022. Oestreicher and Fitzmaurice live and work in north London.

In 2016 she and Fitzmaurice made an amateur recording of Robert Schumann’s song cycle, Dichterliebe. In 2020 Oestreicher suffered a stroke that left her unable to play the piano or write by hand.

In 2001 Oestreicher produced and directed a documentary based on The Art of Remembering exhibition in which 54 contemporary British letter cutters explore themes of memory and loss. In 2010 she and Harriet Frazer curated the exhibition Art & Memory in the Churchyard at St. Mary the Virgin in North Stoke, Sussex and edited the book of the same name, designed to help people navigate the complex churchyard rules and regulations for memorials.

In 1997 she joined Memorial By Artists, a company that helps people commission bespoke, hand-carved memorials, working with MBA’s founder, Harriet Frazer to establish The Memorial Arts Charity (now The Lettering Arts Trust) and co-curating two major exhibitions: The Art of Remembering (1998) at Blickling Hall, Norfolk and Art & Memory (2009) at West Dean, Sussex.

In 1996 she took a Foundation Course in Fine Art at London’s Guildhall School of Art and also returned to activism and her feminist roots.

In 1989, Oestreicher produced the comedy Loser Takes All written and directed by James Scott, in which a penniless couple, played by Robert Lindsay and Molly Ringwald, try to pay their bills by gambling while waiting for their tycoon benefactor, Sir John Gielgud to sail into Monte Carlo harbour.

In 1989, in Los Angeles, Oestreicher met the artist John Fitzmaurice who would later become her husband. They were introduced by Sheila Benson (then film critic of the LA Times) at her Thanksgiving party. Their honeymoon in 2001 was spent in Normandy and soon afterwards they bought a house there. While continuing to develop smaller film projects, Oestreicher started working seriously at the piano again. She also spent more time with her growing family that by now included several grandchildren.

In 1987 High Season written and directed by Clare Peploe went into production, starring Jacqueline Bisset, Kenneth Branagh, James Fox and Irene Papas. Oestreicher’s work developing the project was acknowledged with a Special Thanks credit.

In 1985-86 Oestreicher and Richard Craven produced a four minute film, Campaign Film for the British Film Industry directed by James Scott and starring James Fox, Dudley Moore and Julie Walters.

In 1984 Oestreicher and Scott co-produced the short film Samson and Delilah adapted from a D.H. Lawrence short story by Mark Peploe who also directed. The film was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in 1984 and a BAFTA award for Best Short Film in 1985.

In 1984 Oestreicher produced Scott’s drama, Every Picture Tells a Story for Channel Four Television based on the work and early life of his father, the acclaimed painter William Scott. Starring Phyllis Logan and Alex Norton, the screenplay was written by Shane Connaughton. from stories recounted to him by William Scott about his childhood in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

In 1983, at the 55th Academy Awards, Oestreicher won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film for her 25-minute comedy drama A Shocking Accident. written and directed by James Scott from the story by Graham Greene. Starring Rupert Everett and Jenny Seagrove the film is about a bizarre incident involving a pig falling from a balcony and was also nominated at the 1983 BAFTAs.

In 1982, Oestreicher was nominated for an Oscar by the Academy of Motion Pictures for her production of Clare Peploe's short film Couples and Robbers (1981), starring Frances Lowe and Rik Mayall. The film was also nominated for a BAFTA award at the 1982 BAFTA awards.

Throughout the 1980s Oestreicher was developing several feature films including Still Rage and High Season with Clare Peploe, and Every Picture Tells a Story, Dibs in Search of Self and Loser Takes All with Scott. Meanwhile, she was an active member of the London based Association of Independent Producers, founded by Richard Craven to lobby for government and television finance for indigenous British cinema. During this time, Oestreicher and Scott held monthly meetings of British independent filmmakers.

In 1979, after being awarded a grant in 1987 from The National Film Development Fund for their feature film project, The Darkroom Window, Oestreicher and Scott formed their production company, Flamingo Pictures. To help facilitate Scott’s transition from independent filmmaking to mainstream features, Oestreicher set about organising retrospectives of his films at London’s British Film Institute, Institute of Contemporary Arts and Paris’s Cinematheque Nationale as well as other significant European venues. She was also developing several short film projects, including one for Scott to direct.

Oestreicher began her film career in 1978 as Co-Producer for James Scott’s 50-minute documentary Chance, History, Art...  about the after-effects of surrealism. Made for the Arts Council England and completed in 1980, the film was shown at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam and won the Silver Boomerang prize at the Melbourne International Film Festival.

In 1975 she began working on a collection of interviews with men, looking at their early childhoods from a feminist perspective, exploring why boys grow up feeling automatically ‘entitled’ whereas girls do not. Deciding it was too early for a feminist project featuring men, she shelved it temporarily to work on a film.

In the late sixties Oestreicher became involved with the Second Wave Feminist Movement. From 1970-1975 she was Personal Assistant to the Political Editor of Penguin Books, Neil Middleton, whose list included feminist titles such as Juliet Mitchell’s Women’s Estate and Sheila Rowbotham’s Woman’s Consciousness, Man’s World, as well as controversial books on Northern Ireland and Latin America.

In 1962, after her marriage broke down, Oestreicher and her daughters started a new life in Islington where they met life-long friends Harriet Behrens (now Frazer), the artist Suzy Boyt and their children. In 1963 she met her second husband, Dan Oestreicher, a mathematician and computer software designer with three young children. In July 1964 their daughter, Lily, was born.

During the late fifties and early sixties, she and her husband were members of a choir run by the conductor, John Eliot Gardiner, devoted to early English and Baroque music. In 1960, she played the lead in an amateur musical, Mayor’s Nest, in aid of World Refugees.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Oestreicher was an avid cinema-goer, especially drawn to the films of Antonioni, Bertolucci, Fellini, Hitchcock, Michael Powell, Jacques Tati, Truffaut, Luchino Visconti and Lina Wertmuller. During the sixties, through filmmaker Serge Brodskis, she became friends with Chantal Akerman and Jacques Baratier. In 1977 she became a founding member of The Other Cinema, one of the only UK cinemas that, as well as showing rare films from abroad, showed rarely seen films by British independent filmmakers.

In 1957 after a spell studying French and Dress Design in Paris, she returned to the UK for the London Debutante Season where she met her husband, the literary agent Andrew Best. They were married in 1958 and had two daughters.

Based on the 1955 novella Loser Takes All by Graham Greene with a supporting cast including Michel Blanc, Margi Clake, Richenda Carey, Frances de la Tour, Marius Goring and Max Wall, the film had all the ingredients for success but was a box office flop and a critical disappointment after being rescripted, re-cut, rescored and retitled Strike It Rich at Harvey Weinstein’s behest.

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.

Christine Oestreicher was born Christine Marguerite Nunes Carvalho in Somerset, England in 1940. Her mother was Scottish and her father, descended from the Sephardic Jews forced out of Portugal by the Inquisition in the 16th century.