Texas born Jerry Rudes is retiring as president of the Avignon Film Festival - an event he set up 25 years ago. “I started this festival as a way for directors and creative people to get together. Over 25 years, that spirit of the festival has stayed the same.

“We keep it small and intimate and we have wonderful filmmakers who are the creative force behind these films,” said Mr Rudes.

European filmmakers were what originally drew him from the US where he grew up with a love of film and earned a master's degree in film and television. He came to Europe in the 1970's seeking the life that he had witnessed in Fellini's La Dolce Vita.

“When I discovered foreign filmmakers like Fellini and Truffaut, I not only got a different vision of filmmaking, but also of life,” said Mr Rudes. “So I said, 'this is great, this is for me.”

A freelance literary agent for over a decade, Mr Rudes now splits his time between Avignon and New York City, where he opened his own literary agency, Mistral Artist Management, this year.

In addition, he serves as an international consultant for the American subsidiary of LVT, Laser Subtitling of France, supervising the French, German and Italian subtitling of many of the US films selected for the Cannes, Berlin and Venice Film Festivals.

He also coordinates English subtitling for a great many of the foreign films released theatrically in the United States.

His now accomplished career began with a succession of modest but interesting jobs - first as a freelance journalist for The Texas Observer and then years teaching in international schools (Spain, Denmark, Italy) while first living in Europe. Becoming a translator in Spain while he wrote his first novel, entitled Life Script (unpublished), he continued to support his writing by working as a stone mason and as a professional diver off the Mediterranean coast fishing for mussels and oysters seasonally.

Director

He wrote film reviews for AvanteGarde Magazine in London when he returned to the US briefly to live in LA, but by 1982, Mr Rudes had re-settled in the south of France where he was appointed director of a study-abroad program at The Institute for American Universities in Avignon.

This led him to found the non-profit American cultural and study organization the French-American Center of Provence, with branches in six major cities across the south of France.

These centers organized English language course and cultural exchange programs. The center in Montpellier still flourishes today www.frenchamericancenter.com and Mr Rudes remains its president.

Over several years he closed the other centers to devote more of his time and energy to the love that brought him to Europe in the first place - film.

In 1983, he founded the French-American Film Workshop, later to become the Avignon Film Festival and conducted the first Rencontres d’Avignon in 1984, hosting filmmakers from the US and from France for a lively exchange about independent movies.

“Our efforts made a statement not only about the richness and diversity of cinema but also about international friendship and open cultural exchange,” he said.