Walter Francisco launches his first Chichester International Film Festival

Now in its 32nd year, the festival – based at the Chichester Cinema at New Park – will run from August 9-25 and promises to offer a programme of exciting film screenings, exclusive premieres and a host of new live events to captivate audiences. It will be Walter’s first in charge since the retirement of film festival and Chichester Cinema at New Park founder Roger Gibson, but Walter is hardly new to the venue. Walter has overseen yearly programming at Chichester Cinema for two decades and is its head of programming.

“I have been here for a lot of years, 21 years in September,” Walter says, “and just seeing how Roger did it and went about dealing with the distributors and the film-makers and how he got the best deals and how he tried to get the best films means that I have definitely got a template as to how to do it. Now it's just about me being allowed my two cents!

“I think my approach is that I can cherry-pick. In working side by side with Roger for so long I think I know what works and what doesn't work and I can choose. Our festival is half brand-new films and the other half is retrospectives whereas some other festivals are all new films or all documentaries or all retrospectives. And that means that we have a lot of freedom. I can choose themes like this year we are looking at Marlon Brando and also this year we are focusing on Greta Gerwig who I call the new triple threat. She acts and she writes and she directs and she was responsible for one of the biggest films of the last 12 months and brought lots of people back to the cinema with Barbie. So basically like Roger did, I can focus on interesting themes but I can bring my own take to that. Just as Roger liked certain films, I think in this year's programme people will think ‘Hmmm, that film is probably Walter’s choice.’ I've got the support here from the whole board and the staff and they trust me, and I feel that I can really benefit from that.

“Over the years I got braver and braver in saying to Roger ‘I don't think that will work’ or ‘Why don't you try this?’ and Roger would listen to me and probably do what he was going to do anyway but it meant that I was able to develop my gut instinct and I do feel that I know what our audience like here. I know that there are films that you will think of as obvious Chichester films but I also know that there are other films that people would like and would be interested in and there is a freedom in doing that. It's a great opportunity.”

New for this year is that the festival is ranging more widely to include other venues: “I have been wanting to do that for a long time. Rather than just being a Chichester Cinema based film festival I wanted to make it a film festival that uses more venues in the area just to spread the love of film. We've never used St Paul’s Church before and we're using it this year just as we are using the Havana bar for the first time this year where we're going to be doing Purple Rain for its anniversary followed by a DJ and music. We're also spreading out a little bit further. We are going to The Windmill in Littlehampton. They are doing five or six films which we also doing here and we're also going to The Spring in Havant. We are still doing as much as we would do here but we're just adding other things at the other venues, just thinking that if we can make more people love cinema then everyone will benefit and perhaps people will start going more but also in these other venues it is also raising awareness of us.”