Connery to attend film festival anniversary bash

Screen legend Sean Connery is to attend a special party to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Edinburgh International Film Festival tonight.

Connery is patron of the festival and will host the party in the National Gallery in the Scottish capital.

This year’s festival is two days longer than usual because of the anniversary.

Connery is also taking part in a special forum at the festival to discuss his rise to fame.

Following a screening of the 1969 documentary The Bowler and the Bunnet, which he produced and presented, the former James Bond will talk about his 50-year career with EIFF Artistic Director Shane Danielsen.

Connery will also be presented with a BAFTA Scotland Award for Outstanding Achievement in Film at the event.

He had been scheduled to appear at the Festival of Politics, organised by the Scottish Parliament this month, but pulled out after it emerged that presiding officer George Reid was planning to ask him his view on violence against women.

Connery was quoted in a US magazine in 1993 as saying: “To slap a woman is not the cruellest thing you can do to her.”

Last year’s Festival of Politics – which featured Vanessa Redgrave, Andrew Marr, Neil Kinnock and Shirley Williams – attracted nearly 3,000 visitors to 22 events.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival began in 1947 as a documentary-based festival established in the wake of the Second World War.