About – CARY COMES HOME FESTIVAL

Cary Comes Home (est. 2014) is a biennial festival which aims to celebrate Cary Grant’s Bristol roots, develop new audiences for his work, and recreate the golden age of cinema-going. The festival is a labour of love for festival director Charlotte Crofts (Professor of Cinema Arts, UWE Bristol), and festival co-ordinator Fern Dunn, born out of their shared passion for Bristol’s vibrant cinema culture and film heritage. This year is our 10th anniversary!

We feel that Cary Grant’s incredible journey – from Bristol boy, Archibald Leach, born in Horfield in 1904, to global icon, Cary Grant – is inspiring for Bristolians and beyond. At the age of eleven, Archie was tragically separated from his mother when she was committed to a mental hospital. Sadly, because of the taboo surrounding mental health, he was told that she had died, and was only reunited with her in his thirties, after he’d become famous. As a child, young Archie haunted Bristol docks, longing to be carried away in one of the tall ships. He eventually sailed away to New York with a troupe of acrobats in 1920, where he worked his way to Hollywood and reinvented himself as Cary Grant.

“I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me.” (Cary Grant)

That transformation – overcoming a painful childhood and beating the odds of his birth to become “the best and most important actor in the history of cinema” according to film critic, David Thompson – is truly remarkable. But what’s equally worthy of comment is the fact that he returned home. A loyal Bristolian, Cary Grant visited the city of his birth regularly to see his mother, supporting local businesses whilst in town, and he even carried on coming home after her death.

“Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant” (Cary Grant)

The Cary Comes Home festival was co-founded by Charlotte Crofts and Anna Farthing in October 2014 and has subsequently attracted a loyal international audience, including Cary Grant fans from across the UK and as far afield as France, Japan, India, Australia and the United States. One American superfan has returned three times! Our 2016 festival took place during Bristol Harbour Festival and celebrated Cary Grant’s maritime connections and in 2018 we focused on Hitchcock and Cary Grant’s darker side and we went on tour to Bristol’s twin city Hannover in 2017.

In 2020 the festival’s focus was on the Journeys of Cary Grant and we had planned to take the festival to New York working with Film Forum and Film Lincoln to celebrate the centenary of Archie’s emigration to America, but we had to pivot online due to the pandemic. In 2022 we came back stronger with a festival themed around Class and programmed a successful Autumn/Winter season in 2023. You can watch some of our past events in our Archive.

The focus of 2024‘s festival is on Cary Grant as an acrobat. As we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Cary Comes Home Festival, we look forward to an even brighter future. Our ambition is to grow bigger and better, continuing to honour Cary Grant’s legacy while expanding our reach and impact. We invite you to join us in this exciting journey, whether as an audience member, volunteer, or supporter. Together, we can keep the spirit of Cary Grant alive and thriving in Bristol and beyond.

	Professor Charlotte Crofts (Festival Director) is a Professor of Cinema Arts at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol). She is passionate about both cinema-going and Bristol as a city of film and has made various projects celebrating local cinema culture, including The Curzon Memories App, The Lost Cinemas of Castle Park App and The Fleapit. She got the idea for the Cary Grant Festival when researching Bristol cinemas and discovered that Cary Grant talked fondly of visiting The Clare Street Picture House with his mother and the Metropole, with his father, and his films were screened at the Bristol Hippodrome, the theatre where he started out. She partnered with Show of Strength Theatre Company to expand her Looking for Archie walking tour into the Raising Cary Grant theatre walk in 2023. She has published widely on her curatorial practice and screen tourism as well as publishing video essays about Cary Grant, including one for BBC’s Inside Cinema.
	Fern Dunn (Festival Co-ordinator) graduated from the MA Curating at UWE in 2014, where she completed a placement within the Watershed programming team under the mentorship of cinema curator, Mark Cosgrove. During her MA, Fern curated a season of film screenings entitled Beats and Buddhism, culminating in a screening of the Martin Scorsese film Kundun, introduced by Philip Glass himself. Fern has since taken on roles as Social Media and Community Manager at Aardman (March 2023 – July 2024) and Social Media Manager at Mischievous Wolf (July 2024 – Present). In these positions, she has honed her skills in social media marketing, content strategy, and community management, further enriching her expertise in engaging diverse audiences and promoting cultural events.
	Col Needham(Festival Advisor) is the founder and CEO of IMDb, the #1 movie website in the world and a huge Cary Grant fan. Born and living in the UK, Col has had a lifelong interest in both technology and movies. IMDb grew out of a personal database of movie information which Col created as a teenager, combined with similar data collected on the Internet in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Col published the first version of IMDb online in October 1990 and co-ordinated IMDb as a worldwide volunteer effort from 1990-1996. IMDb incorporated in January 1996 with the volunteers as shareholders and IMDb became a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com in April 1998. Col continues in his original role to this day, working from an office in Bristol with IMDb staff members in countries around the world. Col takes an active part in local cinema culture, regularly supporting the Cary Comes Home festival, and serving as a juror on FilmBath’s New Filmmaker and Script to Screen Awards.
	Kathrina Glitre is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol where she researches classic movies and contemporary film culture. She likes to credit her career to Cary Grant, since he inspired the PhD research which led to her first book, Hollywood Romantic Comedy: States of the Union (Manchester University Press, 2006). She has since gone on to write extensively about Cary Grant, Hollywood acting, casting and characterisations and is about to publish an article dealing with sexual ambiguity and performance in My Favorite Wife.
	Pam Beddard(Publicist) is a Bristol-based is an award-winning publicist and journalist with a special passion for promoting the stuff which makes the world a greener, fairer, nicer, jollier or more interesting place. Recent/current work includes regional promotion of Cinema Rediscovered; publicity/ marketing of a TISWAS reunion in aid of the SW Children’s Hospice and a commemoration of the life and career of Barry Cryer; PR and lobbying campaigns for a renewable energy project and work with various wildlife TV production companies. Pam Beddard is also the longtime publicist for the Afrika Eye festival of African cinema and culture, the Cary Grant Comes Home film and events festival and Slapstick, the UK’s biggest festival of silent and classic comedy.
	Roger GriffithMBE (Festival Consultant) is a writer, producer, educator and social activist. He is a consultant and CEO of his company Creative Connex He lecturer’s and works on special diversity projects for UWE Bristol, including working on the team that helped Channel 4 move to Bristol. He is a broadcaster and former CEO/Chair of Ujima Radio an award-winning community radio station. He has a passion for sharing cultural stories, global observations and insights on race, inclusivity and striving for social equality.
	Julia Morrish (Festival Assistant) is Operations Co-ordinator (Bristol) & PA to CFO of Creative England. After graduating from Surrey University with a degree in Film & Creative Writing, Julia returned to Bristol and worked on various film festivals including Cary Comes Home, Encounters and Slapstick. One of her proudest moments was being a grumpy steward at Banksy’s Dismaland (2015). Julia completed the MA Curating at UWE Bristol in 2016, during which she curated the Jim Jarmusch “Stranger Than Love” season as part of the BFI Love season. Julia officially became a Festival Assistant for Cary Comes Home in 2017.
	Dr Anna Farthing(Festival Consultant) is an award-winning creative consultant and leader who creates and delivers engaging cultural projects across heritage, creative, cultural, and education sectors. She co-founded the Cary Comes Home Festival (2014-16) and has a background in theatre, working with institutions like the National Theatre and Bristol Old Vic, Tobacco Factory Theatre, M Shed museum, the National Museum of the Royal Navy, the International Slavery Museum, Bristol European Green Capital and Manx National Heritage, Bristol Doors Open Days, the International Agatha Christie Festival, Larkin: New Eyes Each Year for Hull U.K. City of Culture and Chatsworth Renewed. She has also served as Chief Executive Officer at New Theatre Royal and Director of Civic and Cultural Engagement at Arts University Bournemouth. Committed to education and participation, Anna mentors young artists and develops new work, building diverse teams and inspiring audiences through storytelling.
	Mark Glancy (Academic Advisor) is Reader in Film History at Queen Mary University of London and author of Cary Grant: The Making of a Hollywood Legend (OUP, 2020), the definitive Cary Grant biography (with the most accurate account of his Bristol childhood). He was editorial consultant on Becoming Cary Grant (Yuzu Productions, 2017), and he has written articles about Grant’s career. Originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, and now residing in Britain, his background has fuelled an interest in transatlantic film perspectives. This journey began with the book When Hollywood Loved Britain (1999) and continued with Hollywood and the Americanization of Britain (2014). His research interests also include the Hollywood studio system, historical films, cinema-going and he has written extensively on Alfred Hitchcock and regularly contributes to BBC History and History Revealed magazines, and appears on radio programs such as Archive Hour, Back Row, Free Thinking, and Great Lives.
	Gary Shapiro (New York Committee) works at Columbia University in its news office. He was on staff at the Forward newspaper and the New York Sun. He subsequently has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Villager, and other publications. A former contributing editor at the Phi Beta Kappa quarterly journal, The American Scholar, Shapiro earned a bachelor’s degree at Harvard University majoring in Classics and a law degree at Columbia Law School. He is on the board of the Society of Professional Journalists’ New York Chapter called the Deadline Club. Shapiro chairs the Film Committee at the National Arts Club, located in Manhattan. An avid walker, he was also a tour guide in New York.
	Ross Wilcock is an LGBT poet, writer, social media influencer, and activist living with multiple disabilities. He has recently begun working within the access sector assisting film festivals to become more accessible. He volunteers with The Seamore Neighbourhood Cinema, Matchbox Cineclub, and other film events in Glasgow, and has programmed for SQIFF.