Selecting the 2009 Programme

It is the job of the committee to select the films that we screen in each season and we all take our responsibilities very seriously.

After a few false starts the films we choose for our programme seem fall into the following categories:

1. Box office successes which subsequently won major awards.

2. Independent films that came from nowhere to pick up a few awards.

3. Films starring Judi Dench, Helen Mirren or Kate Winslet.

4. A selection of classic foreign language films.

The benefit of this is that it enables us all to catch up on the films that we missed while they were on general release - a full-time job does limit the number of films you can see and my mental "must see" list grows longer by the week - as well as to stumble across the occasional unexpected gem.

For the start of the season we try to select a crowd pleaser to encourage members to renew their subscriptions. This year our choice was In The Loop, which despite the 24 carat swearing (apparently Armando Ianucci sends all his scripts to a swearing consultant who adds the expletives) was very successful. Apparently it's even better on a second viewing, and I look forward to seeing it again very soon.

Our next film was Conversations with my Gardener which definitely falls into the category of unexpected gem: a middle-aged French artist returns to his home village and deciding to renovate his parents' old home finds he has appointed an old school friend as his gardener. If the film ever suffered the indignity of a Hollywood remake it would easily lapse into the most awful sentimentality, but the director kept his actors just on the right side of mawkishness.

Later this month our film is definitely in Category 3: we will be screening The Reader.