At the Cannes film festival this year, the latest in their venerable series of Cinema Lessons is to be given by... Martin Scorsese.
Previous lecturers have included Stephen Frears, Wong Kar Wai, Sydney Pollack and Nanni Moretti.
I'll let the facts speak for themselves.
There's a very exciting film project on the cards, but only the luckiest of us will get to see it - well, any time soon, at least. It looks like Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch. the Coen Brothers, Lars von Trier, Wong Kar Wai, Michael Cimino, Ken Loach, Wim Wenders, Chen Kaige, Abbas Kiarostami, Emir Kusturica and Nanni Moretti are amongst the directors behind the camera for this incredible king-of-all-films.
Sound too good to be true? Well, not quite actually.
This year, the Cannes film festival marks it's 60th anniversary and as a special celebration, an anthology of shorts by winners of the Palme d'Or is being compiled. The only director confirmed as absent so far is Pedro Almodovar, who appears to be too busy with his frightening sounding new film.
It isn't clear if this incredible seeming collaborative collage of shorts is ever going to see the lght of day outside of the festival, but I would sincerely hope so. Keeping something so desirable, and most likely very enjoyable, from the film fans of the world would strike me as arrogant and selfish.
Here we go: Gianni Rondolino has stepped down and now Nanni Moretti is to come back? Will any of the films at the Turin festival generate this much intrigue?
Only two days after being appointed the director of the Turin film festival, Nanni Moretti has stood down. According to the Associated Press, Moretti has cited "an atmosphere of tension" as his reason for departing the post.
Of course, this tension has proven to be overtly political - Moretti's film The Caiman, a fictionalised strike at Silvio Berlusconi, was released just days before last April's elections. To a casual observer, this simply suggests that the resulting 2007 Turin Festival - seemingly sanctioned by the right wing critics who caused Moretti these troubles - is going to end up rather politically biased, and undeniably so. Will it atttract a lot of political commentary in it's coverage?
[EDIT: And here's the line with which Moretti resigned: "With great pain I give up the job and leave you to your... personal grudges.” Brilliant]
