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.
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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.