Chichester: Rosemary’s century of cinema sessions!

Her sessions, over the past four years, have each focused on a different novel and the way it has been translated into film. Each generally includes clips from the film, but not the film in its entirety. To mark her century of sessions, Rosemary will for once be offering the whole movie, this time Vanity Fair on December 4, running from 1.30-3.30 when she will be hoping for a bumper turn-out.

“I was teaching for nearly 40 years as an English teacher, but I retired as deputy head at a Hampshire school,” Rosemary says. “When I retired as a full-time teacher, I worked for another five years as an English advisor. I didn’t stop full-time paid work until 2011, but being the kind of person I am, I didn’t want to sit around doing nothing. I was already a magistrate in Portsmouth (which I will have to stop doing quite soon because of the age limitation), but I went to the New Park Cinema as a steward, initially just showing people in. But at that time, they were raising money for the digital projector, and some people were giving quite large sums of money. I said to the manager Walter I would be willing to teach a one-off nine-week course on Page to Screen, how novels are translated to the screen, and that I would do it for nothing, that all the money would go to the digital projector.”

And so she began... and hasn’t stopped...

For the first-ever series, she did three sections each comprising three films. The first three looked at Child In War and examined the book and film of The Kite Runner; The Boy in Striped Pyjamas; and Empire of the Sun. The second set of three films looked at the British new wave with the films featured being Saturday Night, Sunday Morning; Room at the Top; and A Taste of Honey.