RECORD audiences poured into venues across Dorset to watch more than 87 movies in the largest and longest running rural film festival in the UK.

More than 2,000 movie fans enjoyed movies before the curtain fell on the annual Purbeck Film Festival, which showed a combination of new releases and classic films in village halls and rural cinemas for two weeks at the end of October.

The screenings began with the first public showing of the international award-winning film Deadlines, a fast moving, thought-provoking thriller set in war-ravaged Lebanon in 1983.

Two weeks later the festival ended with one of the first showings of Roman Polanski's latest film, the Charles Dickens classic Oliver Twist.

Delighted chairman of organisers Purbeck Film Charitable Trust Tony Viney said the future success of the event depended on building a strong audience base, providing a range of films to appeal to a wide audience and the involvement of local communities.

"We want to establish a tradition of visiting films in the village," he said.

"That is not the tradition as we might remember it, when we went to a large cinema miles away and saw a film in the company of strangers, but a new tradition where you walk down the road with friends, perhaps have something to eat, and then see a film that you have voted to see.

"We have a lot of people in the village halls who have helped us to do this.

"They are our frontline troops and without them we could not have possibly put on the festival."

Organisers introduced desert island flicks to the festival, where a member of the audience could choose a film in exchange for a contribution towards the costs, and in return received free tickets and the opportunity to present the feature to the crowd.

Planning for the festival's 10th anniversary year has already started, and organisers hope the event will be even bigger and better.

The festival costs £35,000, but Mr Viney said organisers are trying to make it as self-sufficient as possible so it does not have to depend on grants and subsidies.

For more information on the festival, click here

First published: November 3, 2005