New executive director for Chichester Cinema at New Park

SussexWorld

Making the Chichester Cinema at New Park less reliant on its box office is one of the challenges facing the cinema’s new executive director Anne-Marie Flynn.

Transcript

00:00 Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor for Sussex Newspapers. Lovely

00:06 this morning to be speaking to Anne-Marie Flynn, who is the new Executive Director of

00:10 the Chichester Cinema at Newport. Now, you're walking into a place which is so beloved of

00:15 so many people. It must be a very exciting position to take up.

00:19 It is, it's a very exciting position. I've been on the board for three years and I think

00:25 I'm probably one of the most frequent visitors to the cinema anyway. So I feel I know the

00:32 place from my own experiences of it and I've seen how much joy it's given me ever since

00:38 I came to Chichester when I didn't really know anybody. I've made so many friends just

00:43 going along there and it's a place you can go on your own.

00:47 It's a really safe place to go, isn't it? But also welcoming, isn't it? And I think

00:51 it's so significant that I think it was one of the most missed places in Chichester during

00:55 the pandemic.

00:56 I'm sure it must have been because, you know, people are so loyal and people love coming

01:02 along and as I say, they can come on their own. And it really is a source of great sort

01:06 of friendship and you really feel a sense of community. And I particularly felt that

01:11 during the festival this year, where you go along and you'd see, you know, so many familiar

01:16 faces who were, you know, consuming film and just loving everything that Roger was programming.

01:22 So yes, I feel very honoured to be part of it.

01:26 And you're coming into a happy, confident place that's doing well. But equally, there

01:30 are challenges, aren't there? What are the real issues that you've got to address in

01:34 your position, do you think?

01:36 Yes, we are in a good place. But since the pandemic, it took quite a while for audiences

01:44 to feel secure and safe about coming back. And I think it was quite clear with particular

01:50 Oppenheimer and Barbie, where we were absolutely jammed to the gills with every screening,

01:57 that people are now coming back. So the films are there, people feel safe and they're coming

02:02 back. So that's really, really positive. And, you know, I can, I feel it myself when I go

02:08 there, that, you know, even I suppose, because we have a lot of older people also who come

02:13 to the cinema, we do very, very well with our matinees and our early evening screenings.

02:18 For me, the real challenge ahead is to try and build up more income from just the box

02:25 office and ownership, because you're very vulnerable if it means either if you have

02:31 a pandemic, or for example, if you have a bad year at the box office, and sometimes,

02:37 you know, we've got the strikes going on at the moment, there's going to be, you know,

02:41 a lot of films have had to stop being made, there's nothing going on, everything has ground

02:45 to a halt at the moment. And so there could be big sort of gaps.

02:50 How long until that filters through into the release of films?

02:55 Well, exactly. And it can take time, because then all those films that were going to be

03:00 released, get stuck in the logjam, as it were. So you've got these things that can happen

03:07 that you're not expecting. And sometimes you just don't, you have a year where the films

03:12 aren't great. And if the films aren't great, you can't make people come to the cinema.

03:17 And so you're quite vulnerable if you are so reliant on your box office. So I see my

03:23 role as trying to sort of find other partnerships and other ways of generating income.

03:29 Fantastic. Well, good luck with that. Good luck in the new role. Let's keep in touch.

03:34 Thank you very much indeed.

03:35 Thank you very much. Thank you, Phil.

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