Sheila Benson

Career

She was the principal Los Angeles Times film critic from 1981-1991, then their Critic at Large covering entertainment and the arts (1991) She was Film Critic for Master of Science in Nursing’s Microsoft Cinemania,, from its inception in 1995 to its extinction, June, 1998. Prior to Los Angeles, Benson was a film critic and interviewer for the Pacific Sun in Mill Valley, California and contributed the Good Movies segment of Company-Evolution Quarterly for Stewart Brand, 1979-1981. Benson’s coverage, essays and interviews have appeared in publications including Interview.

Variety.

Premiere; Film Comment. Time Out; the San Francisco Examiner Magazine. Canada’s The Globe and Mail and The New York Times.

She wrote the narration for Home Box Office"s The First 100 Years: A Celebration of American Film, and the liner notes for the Digital Video Disc of Horton Foote’s Tomorrow (1972 film).

Since moving to Seattle in 2006, she was a reviewer of films and books at the Seattle Weekly and now writes at Critic Quality Feed.

Achievements

• A recipient of the Vesta award for her contribution to the arts in Southern California from the Women's Building in Los Angeles, she taught Critical Writing at University of California, Los Angeles, and was writer/host of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences" tribute for the birthday centennial of Mary Pickford in 1993.

Membership

Affiliated with the National Society of Film Critics, Parallax View (Seattle), and the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, Benson taught Critical Writing at University of California, Los Angeles, was a member of the jury at the 35th Berlin International Film Festival in 1985, and on the juries at the film festivals of Chicago, Montreal, Manila, Hawaii, Seattle, Aspen, Taos, and the Sundance festival in Park City, Utah.