Ask Mark Adams about his Edinburgh Film Festival memories and he starts talking about Clint Eastwood.

This would have been back in the 1980s, he thinks, during Jim Hickey's era as the festival's director. It was Adams's first visit to the festival and it just so happened he met the American actor/director in the bar at the Caledonian Hotel. "The most charming person," he says. "I remember being blown away by the notion of the celebs being in the bar."

That sense of access is one of his first memories of the EIFF and he thinks it might still his best. "You can't get much better than Clint Eastwood." The question is, will he still feel that way a fortnight from now?

The 69th Edinburgh International Film Festival opens on Wednesday with the world premiere of Robert Carlyle's directorial debut The Legend of Barney Thomson. It is also the moment the curtain goes up on the beginning of Adams's reign as EIFF's new artistic director. He's been in the post since March and here is where it all gets serious.

And yet when we speak there is little sign of pre-match nerves. "No, we're really confident actually. Really happy," he says as we sit down in the cafe of the Filmhouse to talk about festivals past, present and future.

"We're thrilled that Robert Carlyle's film is available to open because I would imagine other festivals were interested in it. I know he took a long time to finish editing because he has been so busy on TV. It was just the right time. He's thrilled and we're really pleased he's going to be here."

Adams seems quite pleased to be here too. "It's a great job," he says. "You're artistic director of the film festival. You get to choose movies. What's better than that?

"I've been coming here for a long time anyway and have always loved it. It has that sense of history. It's not a new Johnny-Come-Lately festival. It's the oldest running film festival in the world. It has that kudos to it. These chances don't come up very often."

Adams, who is currently looking for somewhere to rent in the Scottish capital, compares the job of festival director to that of a football manager but he doesn't seem the kind to dole out Fergie-style hairdresser treatments. What's striking talking to him today is the sense of unflustered calm he exudes.

He conducted his interview for the job at six in the morning from Mexico via Skype after being on an aeroplane for 24 hours. Clearly jetlag didn't prove a problem. He began officially just three months before the festival kicked off. That's not a lot of time to get his feet under the table, is it? What's his experience been so far?

"The analogy I've been using is that its' like joining a train that's already on the track. It's well on the way and you can see the station. You can't really change direction but you can repaint the train a bit."

He doesn't seem the kind for a Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen-style makeover anyway. There's an unfussy pragmatism to how he sees the job. "I think the word vision can be a bit overused," he says at one point.

"You're only as good as the films that are available and the team that you work with. We've had this happy coincidence that there are some really great Scottish films available to us. That's not a grand design. It just happens as you gather it together."

He returns a number of times to the specialness of Edinburgh, its intimacy and warmth. But does everyone share that vision? The fact is, I suggest to Adams, ever since I started writing about the Edinburgh International Film Festival back in the mid-nineties (Mark Cousins' first year as director) coverage of the festival has been caught up in recurrent narratives of decline. So often in the media it has been presented as on its last legs or in need of renewal.

Sometimes with good reason. The 2011 festival in particular, has gone down a failure, lacking guests and awards and with real worries about future funding. Things were shored up under Chris Fujiwara's subsequent tenure as director though even then there were mutterings about a lack of excitement. The fact is, there has long been a perception - unfair or not - that the festival is not what it was. Whatever that might have been.

"It's hard to deal with perceptions," Adams says simply. "Maybe you get tunnel vision. Go elsewhere and you realise the way it's held in esteem by key distribution companies, by talent who have fond memories of coming here. We hear from a lot of people who are desperate to come back because they had a great time.

"It's very hard when you're on the ground because the littlest things get blown out of proportion. There's an obsession about the minutiae - funding being cut and things. I think this year - I'm going to say this because I'm biased obviously - we have a real momentum going into it. Tickets are selling very well."

Yes, he says, more money would be great but that's not where the world economy is at the moment. Things change. That's life. What matters is that the passion for the festival from talents such as Robert Carlyle is still very much there. "I think sometimes we all get a bit jaded. It's easy to go 'oh it's not as good as it was.' And the truth is these things just change all the time. We've got young film makers who are thrilled and so excited to have the chance to show their films at one of the biggest festivals in the UK. We're a big festival and internationally that's really respected."

If anything he sounds a bit bored with the perennial "will you move it back to August" question. "I'm not sure it's worth going over again, to be honest. This is the situation we're in. I don't have a problem with where we are now.

"The weird thing is it moved seven years ago. It feels such a long time ago."

He points out moving it back to August would mean more expensive hotel and flight costs and the loss of venues such as the Festival Theatre. "You wouldn't be able to do what you do now," he says. Let's take that as a no, shall we?

Adams, who turned 55 this month, was born in Nottingham and grew up in Leicester. He discovered his love of the movies sitting in front of telly on weekend afternoons.

Training as a journalist he cut his teeth on the Leicester Mercury covering everything from court cases to fires and murders and the odd Leicester City game in the days when Gary Lineker was still playing for his home club.

In 1986 he "fluked" a job with the American film trade magazine Variety in London and then progressed to programming for the National Film Theatre and the ICA in the capital. He has written books, continues to review films for The Sunday Mirror and once sat at dinner with Quentin Tarantino and Bernardo Bertolucci as they discussed spaghetti westerns. The only type of film he's not totally keen on are horror flicks. "I've learnt a tactic to face slightly away when I hear the chainsaw turning on."

Presumably he's got a life beyond the movies. He's married with two grown-up kids for a start. What does he do when he's not in a cinema seat? "When I can, I play tennis. I'm a big football fan. I'm a season ticket holder at Arsenal. We live near the ground. I'm barely there so my kids tend to use the ticket ..."

He can't think of anything else. "Actually the film world is so enjoyable once you get into it." His wife is in the film business too. "She works for a sales agent that sells films internationally. She goes to Cannes and Berlin. But we never see each other. We never stay in the same room."

His life is cinematic, it would seem. This time in two weeks' he'll have his first Edinburgh under his belt and then there's the small matter of 2017, and the 70th festival. And between then and now? There will be films to see, festivals to go to. "There's always a film festival somewhere in the world. That's what you realise. You go to lovely places and sit in the dark."

The Edinburgh International Film Festival opens on Wednesday with The Legend of Barney Thomson. Visit edfilmfest.org.uk for more details.