Bill Forsyth doesn’t normally wallow in nostalgia, but a recent appearance at the Edinburgh International Film Festival forced him to sit down at his home near Loch Lomond to watch clips from his eight films for the first time in almost 30 years.

“It’s the only time I have looked at most of the films since I worked on them,” he says. “As far as I am concerned, once a film is finished, it’s finished. But it’s nice, at this time of my life, to sit back and assess them properly, with a cold objectivity.”

Forsyth, the man credited with reviving the moribund Scottish film industry in the 1980s with cult classics such as Gregory’s Girl and Local Hero, claims to feel “no strong attachment” to his work. He prefers to let the films speak for themselves. However, at the age of 62, he is beginning to open up.

“After spending a lot of time saying no to invitations to attend film festivals and workshops around the world, I’ve begun to accept some,” he says. “I’ve just been to Ibiza. I’m doing an interview in Edinburgh and later in the year I’m going to the US. Maybe I’m just at a point in my life when it’s nice to do these things.”

For the past 10 years Forsyth has been elusive, giving just a handful of interviews and steering clear of the film business. His last feature film, Gregory’s Two Girls, made in 1999, failed to generate the same excitement as the Bafta-winning original, and a television pilot he worked on for two years was dropped because it was no longer topical.

He is about to begin work on a new film, Exile, a historic epic set in Scotland and America. The film will be produced by his friend Iain Smith, whose credits include The Killing Fields and Cold Mountain. “We’ve been talking about it for a year or two and now I’ve got to go away and write it,” he says. “It should take the next six months or so, but there’s no pressure.

“It’s tough to talk about it at the moment, because it’s still in the early stages, but for me it’s quite a different thing. It is very much a story and not my usual thing of taking a situation and playing around with the character. It will probably be my most conventional film to date — a nice, straightforward film.”

During his self-imposed exile, Forsyth didn’t watch many films. He hates the cinema and only watches DVDs seven or eight years after their release. “The cinema is such an unpleasant experience,” he says. “There is the smell of stale popcorn, then you are herded along corridors and assaulted by the film on screen. And when it’s over you’re herded out again. It’s horrible.”

He blames childhood trips to the Saturday cinema club in Glasgow for his aversion. “I didn’t enjoy it. We were always being told what to do — get your feet off the chairs and so on. I didn’t grow up with cinema and always imagined myself with a writing career. My little party piece when I was young and my aunts came to visit was my mother asking what I wanted to be. I’d say ‘a journalist’ and they would have a wee laugh. I’m not sure why.”

When he does watch a DVD, he has no interest in blockbusters, which he describes as “mall fodder”, choosing to revisit old art house favourites by European directors. “When I became interested in film and started to watch seriously, I watched French, German and Spanish films from the 1960s. That’s how my taste was formed and I’ve never really got beyond that,” he says.

On balance, he prefers books. He has a stack by his bedside and is currently reading The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Vladimir Nabokov’s first novel in English. “I do not have a favourite writer, but I think Nabokov is a magician with words and images. There is a visual quality to this writing,” he says.

Later this year on a visit to a film festival in Ithaca, New York, Forsyth plans to visit places were Nabokov lived. “I am doing a wee anorak trawl of all his old houses, including the one where he wrote Lolita,” he says.

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