Peter Yates usually avoids back-slapping showbiz bashes. But Bradford made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

The veteran movie director has agreed to take centre stage here in a retrospective of his distinguished screen career.

That's assuming his train turns up. Because the last time he tried to make the journey he got no further than the platform at King's Cross station.

"They were re-opening your museum and they invited me to come. But there was a summer storm and all the trains were cancelled," said Mr Yates.

The 73-year-old veteran of movies as diverse as Steve McQueen's Bullitt and Cliff Richard's Summer Holiday will finally complete the journey to the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television for this year's Bradford Film Festival, which starts on March 14.

He will introduce screenings of some of his films and conduct a movie masterclass with the audience at Pictureville Cinema.

It will mark the 20th anniversary of his last visit, when he helped put Bradford on the movie map by filming Ronald Harwood's play, The Dresser at the Alhambra Theatre.

The film starred Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay, and received Best Picture and Best Director nominations in both the Oscars and British Baftas.

But it was the London Bafta ceremony that put Mr Yates off such events.

"I was sitting there with Albert and Tom and they handed the Best Actor award to the doctor from The Killing Fields," he said.

"I haven't been to the Baftas since."

He is relishing his visit to Bradford, however. "It's very flattering to be invited and I'm looking forward to seeing the films with an audience after all these years."

The screening of Bullitt will be among the festival's highlights. Steve McQueen asked Mr Yates to direct it after seeing the spectacular car chases in his previous film, Robbery, a dramatisation of the 1963 Great Train Robbery. The car sequences in both films are regarded as classics.

He says he learned how to shoot chases during a previous career as a racing driver.

"I was a dogsbody with the Stirling Moss team and I used to race MGs and Austin Healeys as an amateur around the bends at Goodwood and Silverstone. I could get them up to around 90mph - nothing today but it seemed quite fast then."

It was the Bradford director Tony Richardson who gave Mr Yates his big break in films, hiring him as assistant director on the 1961 drama A Taste of Honey.

Said Mr Yates: "Tony used to shoot almost everything on location - very unusual in those days - and as a result when I got to Hollywood I felt I knew more about that side of the business than even they did."

He says he is looking forward to answering questions from the Bradford audience. "But I can guess what the first one will be," he said. "Everyone always wants to know if Steve McQueen did his own stunts.

"The answer is yes."

Film section