Chichester International Film Festival - celebrating 30 years

Roger Gibson, artistic consultant and president of the Chichester Cinema at New Park, admits it’s been a stressy few weeks just recently.

But at the same time he knows there’s a real sense of achievement too as he puts to together the programme for this year’s 30th Chichester International Film Festival which will run from August 11-28 this summer.

As festival director, Roger is already well advanced on the one half of the festival which he can plan with a degree of certainty: that part of the festival which comprises retrospectives, tributes and celebrations of significant film anniversaries.

But it won’t be until he gets back from Cannes that he will be able to confirm – probably in June – the new films and the premieres which make up the other half of the festival.

It’s a furiously busy time.

Roger will turn 84 during this year’s festival. He is still travelling Europe’s big festivals in search of gems he can bring back to Chichester and he is delighted to say that he is yet to catch Covid.

Clearly not much is capable of getting between Roger and making this year’s 30th film festival a festival to remember, one befitting the anniversary.

As he says, when he looks back on how far the festival has come – an off-shoot of the Chichester Cinema at New Park – it really has been a remarkable story.

“The film festival began in 1992 and it was in the July as part of the Chichester Festivities as they were then, and I started it with maybe about 30 films over ten days. I thought it would be something that was worth developing in Chichester, a chance to show some films that would not normally be available to show in our normal programme. I think it was probably about five to six months in the planning and somebody had asked me about doing something for the festival and it went well. But in that first year because it was part of the Chichester Festivities it tended to get swallowed up in all the rest of what they were doing which was basically a big musical festival so the next year we moved into August which was much better for us especially as we had more control over the venue in the month of August.

“What we found in that first year was that it attracted different people. It attracted people who were interested in seeing things they wouldn’t normally see, and really it was just a development of our programming that we were doing already. We managed to offer a good mixture of things. and really it is extraordinary to think that it has grown from being what it was back then to being a big international film festival which is now celebrating its 30th anniversary.

“The move to August was better though I don’t think the film festival grew significantly for several years.

“It was about getting our reputation which was something we had to build up.

“I had to work on my negotiating skills with the film distributors. You’re having to persuade people to give you a film for one or two shows even before it gets released and so they want to know that you have got a good reputation.

“You have to build up the trust and I’m pleased to say that I’m still working with some of the distributors that I started working with back then.

“You create the trust and you build up the negotiations.

“When you try to create a festival you need to be able to say to people ‘Well, we did this this this last year and so this year we’re going to be doing that that and that.’ We were the only film festival around here and we still are.”

So does that mean that things have got easier over the years? Absolutely not and that’s because of the standards Roger sets himself.

“It has got more difficult because I’m becoming more and more ambitious with each year.