Pride as Chichester film festival director steps down

“You get all the stresses and strains of organising it and all the grumpiness to my wife! But when someone says that the cinema or the film festival is a lifeline to them then obviously you do feel a great deal of pride and pleasure.”

In 1979 Roger set up a film society which then became the Chichester Cinema at New Park which then spawned the Chichester International Film Festival in 1992.

Roger will remain closely connected with the Chichester Cinema at New Park, working on the streamings of opera and ballet, special events and also the French Film Festival selection which will come to Chichester in November and December. But he feels that now is the time to step down from the big film festival in the summer. Running from August 4-27, this year’s festival will be his last.

“It's probably age. I will be 85 on August 12 and I thought before that 85 would be the right time to go before I lose my marbles! It's the memory that worries me. In January I have a blank piece of paper to fill and it is a huge thing to organise. It's a terrible responsibility and I'm scared that I might make some incredible bloomer! Memory is an issue but at the same time I've always felt extremely privileged to think that I have got a cinema that I can programme 18 days of films for every summer.

“The first film festival was organised as part of the old Chichester Festivities because I wanted to put film on the map in Chichester and because film has always been the Cinderella subject for grants and so on. So we started modestly – though it didn't seem modest to me at the time – with 30 films in 12 days. That was in July during the festivities but the following year we moved it because we found that we were rather overshadowed by the main festival. So we went into August which was a little bit easier because there was not so much going on at the New Park Centre and we didn't have to be working around the clubs that were using the place. And then it just slowly developed from there over the years. Somebody once said to me early on ‘Could it become the Cannes of the south coast?’ and I just laughed.”

Now Roger wouldn't rule it out though he stresses it's for other people to say. But he does point out that for the first time the closing film is a film that was shown at Cannes. And certainly over the years a string of influential guests have added to the festival's prestige – including David Hare, Steve Coogan, Ralph Fiennes, Timothy Spall, Alec Guinness, Kathleen Turner and Ken Russell. The success of the festival has been partly down to such visitors and guests who have attended screenings followed by Q&As, but it has also been about the retrospectives and also the premieres and the previews on show. This year Roger is delighted to say that the festival has got the most UK premieres it has ever had – again a sign of the festival’s standing within the industry.