Rare public interview with Sir Sean Connery in Edinburgh back on

Sir Connery has agreed to a rare public interview in Edinburgh … but he will not be quizzed about his attitude to violence against women, the subject which sparked his cancellation of an appearance at the Festival of Politics in the city - reports the Sunday Herald.

Connery will grant his audience at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF), which he will attend for 10 days, celebrating the event’s 60th anniversary.

The film star recently pulled out of the Festival of Politics following “unacceptable comments” by George Reid, the presiding officer at Holyrood.

Reid had told a magazine that he would ask the former James Bond actor “difficult questions” about claims that he had defended the occasional need to hit a woman, made in press articles that Connery has always claimed misrepresented him.

Connery is concentrating on the EIFF where, following a showing of his 1967 Clydeside documentary The Bowler And The Bunnet, he will be interviewed by artistic director Shane Danielsen and will take questions from the audience.

He will also be awarded a Bafta Scotland award for outstanding contribution to film in just one of the highlights of a programme to be launched this Wednesday , which this year features an extra two days and includes a focus on US independent cinema.

Danielsen, who will announce 115 features to be shown between August 14 and August 27, said the programme included some provocative films.

Protesting at the “immoral and antiseptic violence” of many Hollywood movies, Danielsen will present one “unbelievably violent” new film with “extreme” sexual content. The Lost, the directorial debut of Chris Sivertson, is based on a Jack Ketchum novel and follows the bloody story of a uncontrollable young American in a small town.

Danielsen, who says he is “quite fond of violence and not easily shocked”, said: “It is unbelievably violent, but it is also one of the most incredible debut features I have seen come out of the US in years – a genuinely interesting portrait of a damaged mind.”

Ray Pye, played by Marc Senter, murders two women he believes to be lesbians at the film’s outset and continues on a path of destruction, escaping justice until the film’s violent climax.

“ I think it works quite well as a critique of nothing less than modern American culture and the instant gratification that American culture spawns, where everything is on demand at call and you should be denied nothing,” said Danielsen. “That is what the hero – very much the anti-hero – wants. He is a monster of drugs and sex, and everything he wants, he gets.”

A film with Scottish relevance is The Host, an old-fashioned monster movie made in South Korea and the cause of a bidding war at Cannes.

Danielsen revealed: “The director, Bong Joon-Ho, to get it financed, cut out a picture of the Loch Ness Monster and stuck it on a postcard of the Han river that runs through Seoul, took it to his financiers and said: ‘That is the movie I want to make!’”

On the subject of Connery, Danielsen said: “He is the patron of the festival, so it seems that in our 60th year we should be commemorating that.

“He is intrinsic to the Scottish film industry, and is the personification of Scotland in Hollywood.”

He said he would not be discussing his alleged comments about women. “I’m not really interested in talking to him about politics; I am very interested in his career.

“It just seems ludicrous that he is continually having to defend himself against something that is at best rather conjectural. If the guy had actually done something, he would have to answer for it demonstrably in a court of law. It won’t be one of my main questions and I keep a fairly tight rein on this kind of thing: I am not interested in people pushing their own agenda.”

The Connery interview is part of the Reel Lives strand of the film festival, sponsored by the Sunday Herald.

A spokeswoman for the EIFF said: “He [Connery] had planned to come to the film festival and Edinburgh for this year’s Festival way back in November. His wife Micheline loves Edinburgh and they both like the whole Festival experience and attend shows.”

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