Updated May 17, 2013, 12.09 p.m. GMT with Italian TV report on Thursday’s incident involving Gandy and Le Bon’s Jaguar XK 120 Tullio M. Puglia
Jaguar is participating in this year’s Mille Miglia from May 16 to 19, 2013, fielding a total of 24 cars, including six from Jaguar Heritage Racing.
Its team includes Le Mans winner Andy Wallace and Alex Buncombe, and luminaries such as Olympian Sir Chris Hoy, Michael Quinn, three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis, actress Hannah Herzsprung, models David Gandy and Yasmin Le Bon, and Salvatore Ferragamo, the grandson of the famed designer, with whom he shares his name.
The heritage models are three XK 120s and three C-types, while Jaguar will also field modern F-types, Lucire’s Car to Be Seen in for 2013.
On the first day, Gandy and Le Bon, co-drivers of an XK 120, were pushed off the road by another competitor, but have begun again at the starting line on May 17. A brief Italian news report is embedded at the end of the article.
Jaguar has previewed this year’s Mille Miglia with a short film, shown below, featuring Gandy, Le Bon, Buncombe, Murray Walker and, famously, Sir Stirling Moss and his 1952 co-driver Norman Dewis.
Ferragamo is the Jaguar F-type’s Italian ambassador, a duty he also has with Relais & Châteaux worldwide. He was presented with an F-type 3·0 V6 S at the Castello di Gabbiano, in Mercatale Val di Pesa, near Firenze. His co-driver for the event is Michael Quinn, grandson of Jaguar founder Sir William Lyons.
Bentley, meanwhile, says it will field two 4½-litre Supercharged Blowers, dating from the 1930s.
Jaeger-LeCoultre is pushing its film connections this week, too, honouring Barbra Streisand at the 40th anniversary Chaplin Award Gala at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
Jaeger-LeCoultre has a multi-year partnership with the Society and recently launched its Filmmaker in Residence initiative. The partnership also covers the Society’s most prestigious annual event, the New York Film Festival, which will be held from September 27 to October 13 this year.
Present at the event were Liza Minnelli, Tony Bennett, Michael Douglas, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Stiller and Blythe Danner. Minnelli, last year’s winner, Catherine Deneuve, and actor Jeremy Irons, donned their Jaeger-LeCoultre Grande Reverso watches at the event.
Streisand received the award from former US President Bill Clinton at Avery Fisher Hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
The legendary singer, actress, producer and director has won the Grammy 15 times, and had been nominated 57 times.
The event was held one week after Charlie Chaplin’s birthday on April 16. Chaplin was the first honoree in 1972: he had spent four days in New York fêted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center at a gala event prior to heading to Los Angeles to accept his honorary Oscar. Chaplin had been in a 20-year exile in Switzerland after he was denied entry in the United States in the 1950s.
More proof that the economic focus is heading east: IWC Schaffhausen has made its first appearance as a sponsor of the Beijing International Film Festival.
The brand, which already has relationships with Kevin Spacey, Cate Blanchett, Jean Reno and Marc Forster in the occident, and Francis Ng, Julian Cheung and Anita Yuen in the orient, found it natural to extend its sponsorship to the Festival, holding a dinner, entitled ‘For the Love of Cinema’, at the Ming Dynasty city wall in Beijing.
Ng, Cheung and Yuen attended, along with actors Yu Nan, Joseph Chang, Li Zonghan, Andrew Lien and Xiong Naijin, as well directors Zhang Yimou, Chris Wedge, Chris Brown, Li Shaohong and Xue Xiaolu. IWC CEO Georges Kern and Benoit de Clerck, its Asia–Pacific managing director, played host. The event was supported by the Motion Picture Association.
The IWC Filmmaker Award was presented at the event to Zhang Yimou by de Clerck and IWC marketing and communications’ director Karoline Huber.
Huber said, ‘Zhang Yimou doubtlessly belongs to the greatest film-makers of our time, and he has won numerous awards and gained recognition at many national and international film festivals. It is an enormous pleasure for us to present him with this award.’ He was also presented with IWC’s latest Portuguese Chronograph Classic in stainless steel, with a special engraving on the reverse.
Aloe Blacc also held a private concert at the event, with DJ Miles Slater taking the party into the small hours.