Cannes - Watching Films
The intertwining worlds of film and luxury watches continued to tighten at the 65th annual Cannes Film Festival.
Already a prominent sponsor of the Venice Film Festival, Jaeger-LeCoultre has been busy outfitting brand ambassador Diane Kruger in the company's timepieces for her gig as one of the Cannes jury members. Chopard, too, has not just been draping red carpet celebrities in millions of dollars of jewelry; the Geneva-based brand's watches have also found their way onto the wrist of more than a few film stars.
Competition films have even become the perfect backdrop for luxury watches. Tomorrow, audiences will view the world premiere of the latest David Cronenberg film "Cosmopolis" starring actor Robert Pattinson of "Twilight" fame. In it, Pattinson will be wearing Chanel's latest incarnation of the J12 exclusively throughout the film: the J12 Chromatic.
Watch brands are binding themselves even closer to cinema by creating their own awards ceremonies to coincide with the festival. Last year, IWC Schaffhausen teamed up with Charles Finch of "Finch's Quarterly Review" to sponsor the exclusive Filmmakers Awards Dinner and Party.
This year's dinner took place at the prestigious Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc on Monday night and included an impressive group of A-list celebrities: Robert De Niro, Ewan McGregor, Gerard Butler, Adrian Brody and Ray Liotta and others attended the event.
The Filmmakers Award was given this year to British director Terry Gillian, whose unique cinematic perspective has created distinctive films like "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus."
"This will be a yearly rendezvous," said Georges Kern, CEO of IWC Schaffhausen. "It's nothing official, it's just our award to friends we appreciate." The CEO also pointed out that the event will remain very selective with only "high-class and the top of the top" guests making the cut for the 200-seat dinner.
Upon receiving his award - a dedicated, engraved IWC Portuguese Automatic watch - Gillian was impressed with the turnout for the dinner. "This is not quite fair because Charles invited me to a small intimate dinner with a few friends and a lot of free booze and we would be happy. And now I am in front of a lot of incredibly famous and wonderful and rich people," said the director in his acceptance speech. He then promptly suggested to the laughing audience that for those interested in investing in his long-gestating film "Don Quixote" there would be donation boxes at the exits.
Maybe when that film finally does make it onto the big screen, Sancho Panza will be wearing an IWC Pilot strapped to his wrist.