The Cannes festival (May 15-25) is to honour one of its all time favourites and right a slight that dates back 34 years.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the critical magazine Positif the festival is to hold a special evening dedicated to nouvelle vague director Alain Resnais. The celebrations will take place on Saturday May 18., when a newly struck print of Je T'Aime, Je T'Aime will be screened. The film was originally to have been shown in 1968, but the festival and the screening were abandoned amidst the student revolution.

After a series of shorts and documentaries, Resnais lit up the festival in 1959 with Hiroshima Mon Amour a dazzling first feature which mixed up sexual candour with visual panache and narrative liberties. He won the Grand Jury prize in 1980 with My American Uncle (Mon Oncle D'Amerique). Most recently he has become popular with Smoking No Smoking and Same Old Song (On Connait La Chanson).