During the Venice Film Festival, Universal Film & Television Journal’s Amir Ganjavie interviewed Roger Gibson the Artistic Director for the Chichester International Film Festival, which he started in 1979. This is his final year with the Festival.
Amir Ganjavie, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): Can you start by giving us a little background on your festival?
Roger Gibson (RG): In 1979, when I was teaching at Chichester College of Technology, I started a Film Society, and I remember the first films we showed were Woody Allen’s Love and Death and Bill Douglas’ Trilogy – and back then we showed films on 16mm. Then in 1984, we moved over from the College where I was teaching to the Community Centre, called New Park Community Centre. So, then we became Chichester Cinema at New Park. We originally opened three days a week (after only doing things once a week when we were a film society), but then it grew gradually until it became open full-time. We are situated in an old Victorian schoolhouse which is part of the Community Centre.
As far as the Film Festival is concerned, that started around 31 years ago. The first festival was part of the annual Chichester Festivities in July. I think we had about 30 films over eight or nine days, but then we moved the festival from July into August the following year, because I wanted to move it out of the Chichester Festivities (which were mainly music events) to give it a life of its own. Every year the Festival structure has expanded.
We have had many guests; probably the one that I am most proud of was Alec Guinness; I invited him to come along and talk about The Horse’s Mouth which is a film that he wrote the screenplay for as well. But the film turned up and wasn’t playable, so we had to quickly change it to Tunes of Glory! He (Alec Guinness) was great! That’s just one highlight.
The Festival started to grow to about 17 days in length. We concentrate on retrospectives, anniversaries, and tributes. For instance, this year the tribute was to Jean-Luc Godard. So, half of it is old and the other half is new.
(UM): Do you have a definition of a good film, aka one that would be good for your festival?
(RG): That’s a difficult question to answer. I think as a festival, or as a cinema, for that matter, we have a responsibility to show what we think are important films to show. So, it’s not a commercial concern. We have to pay our way and that’s what we’ve done every year.
But I like to have a broad section of different types of films and I look for premieres and previews, in other words, all the new stuff. This year we had about 25 UK Premieres, which is
the most we’ve ever had. Once upon a time, it was just two or three, and now I’m getting a lot from Europe. The Opening Night film was a Czech film called Il Boemo or The Bohemian. It’s a very interesting film about the Czech composer Josef Mysliveček. They put it forward for the Oscars. And then our Closing Night film (Along Came Love) is the first time we’ve ever got a film direct from Cannes. Normally, the problem we have in August is that most of the big stuff goes to the London Film Festival, which is in October.
(UM): In terms of selection, do you pick the movies? Do you have programmers?
(RG): No, I do it all myself. I’m the programmer, we don’t have any separate programmers. So I go to Berlin, then I go to Cannes, Karlovy Vary, sometimes Toronto and Venice, and the London Film Festival, which is next month. Although, by the time it gets to the London Film Festival, I’ve already seen most of the films. But I select all the films for the festival myself.
(UM): And that’s how you find all your films, at the festivals?
(RG): Well, we also select from FilmFreeway. We’ve got about four or five judges watching c60 films which are submitted to the FilmFreeway platform and we selected about 13 of those this year.
(UM): You received 60 films?
(RG): 60 were submitted to us. We programmed 13 this year, and they’re usually independent films. We’ve also got audience awards for four sections Premieres/New Releases, Retrospectives/Classics, Documentaries, and Independents. And a lot of the Independents come from FilmFreeway.
(UM): So, you’re looking for independent films not commercial?
(RG): Both. I’m just looking for what I think are interesting films. For example, we had already showed Oppenheimer at the cinema before the festival, but then a 35mm print of it became available, so we showed it again on 35mm, as part of the Festival, just one additional screening. We show a range of films, we can’t be too avant-garde or too experimental because we won’t get an audience! They’re a little bit conservative in Chichester.
(UM): Do you have any quotas for race or gender?
(RG): No, we use the certificate F for female. So, you’ll see any film that’s directed by a woman has an F next to it to distinguish it. We had Loving Highsmith in one of the sections this year. I saw the documentary on her and then I thought since we managed to get the documentary, we would show some of the films related to her work. So, we had American Friend, Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Carol. A couple of them (The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Carol) also featured Cate Blanchett, who we also did a retrospective on.
(UM): And in terms of controversial filmmakers, would you consider works from people like Woody Allen or Roman Polanski?
(RG): Yes, we showed Woody Allen’s A Rainy Day in New York. And I tried to get the Polanski’s film that I saw here in Venice a few years ago, An Officer and a Spy. I contacted Gaumont who owned it, but they wouldn’t let us have it. They didn’t give a reason but said they hadn’t got a license for the UK, and nobody picked it up in the UK. I tried; it was a very good film. I saw his latest one here. It’s enjoyable. But perhaps a bit disappointing for Polanski after An Officer and a Spy and the other things that he’s made. But I’d be quite happy to show his films.
(UM): And when you’re selecting films, do you invite the filmmakers to your festival? How do you try to support or promote the movies at your festival?
(RG): Well, anybody that’s usually from the UK, we contact. We had about 20 guests this year, film directors and actors and we try to do as many Q&As as we have guests. And this is something which marks the festival out, because we don’t normally do this the rest of the year with the cinema.
This year Hugh Bonneville who’s best known for playing the father in Paddington, and for Downton Abbey came along. And Tony Palmer who I know quite well made a very good documentary on Rachmaninoff. It was the 150th anniversary of Rachmaninoff’s birth so Tony introduced his film. There was also a very important film which I think I saw at Cannes in the market, called Afghanistan, and James Glancy came to present it, he was originally a soldier, a marine commander.
(UM): And in terms of venue, I know some festivals are struggling to secure venues.
(RG): We have our own venue.
(UM): So you don’t rent, you have your own?
(RG): Well, we do rent it, but it’s our home in the New Park Centre. We’ve got very nice seats now. We also have open-air screenings and planned to put on three this year, but we had a problem with the weather and had to cancel one.
(UM): And in terms of festivals that you attend, is there any specific festival that you care more about for seeking films?
(RG): Probably Cannes and Berlin because of the fact there’s a market and I try to see films in the market which are not usually so big. We’re up against Edinburgh too..
Edinburgh had their festival right in the middle of ours this year. And the London Film Festival is in October. So, we’ve only got a short window, about six weeks of UK films that we can ever get into the festival.
So, going to the market you see a lot of French films, more French films than any other nationality. But obviously European and Asian films too. It always depends on what I can negotiate. Sales companies want too much money. Our seating is only 110 in the auditorium and they start at €1000. I make them laugh. I say the most we can ever pay is about €500. You can imagine how hard it is with a 110-seater and we charge just ten pounds per ticket.
So, we’d have to be totally full. And we’re not always full for these films. That is a big struggle for us. We get some money from the BFI, but again, it’s fairly modest and we also do quite a lot for what we have. We also have patrons who pay to support the festival.
(UM): You mentioned you’ve been in the business for a while, have you noticed a change in the festival landscape?
(RG): I don’t think they’ve changed very much. I’ve been going, I suppose, for the last 20 years. I went to Berlin first because one of my friends worked there. So, I started with that. I’m very fond of Karlovy Vary. I think the audiences there are wonderful, they’re very young, enthusiastic, sitting on the floor watching very difficult movies. They’re not the best festival for new films necessarily, but absolutely great.
(UM): Anything else you’d like to say?
(RG): Chichester is a fairly conservative place. And we’re trying to get people to see films without well-known directors or actors. So, they’ve got to take a risk! This is proven by the fact that we nearly always sell out for the Surprise Film. So, they have confidence that we’re going to show something worthwhile. I just think people still need to be more adventurous.
That’s the thing. We all go for the big movies, don’t we? We can’t be hypocritical about it. But what is rather awful is that a lot of these independent films only get shown in festivals. Then they disappear. The UK takes a long time to pick up films. I noticed when I looked through the list of films that have been distributed in other countries, we are one of the last. I don’t know whether they’re asking for more money, because the distributors have to make a profit for themselves, but the UK seems to be one of the last to get non-UK films. So, we’re flooded with American films!
Down the road from where we are, there’s a multiplex, it started only about 20 years ago, and we didn’t know what effect it would have on us. But we survived. And now there’s talk of whether Cineworld is going to survive. We started before them, and we’ll continue after them!
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