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BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.<\/strong> \u2013 Teyana Taylor, Mick Jagger, Kristen Stewart<\/a> and Wagner Moura<\/a> were just a few of the stars mingling on the patio of the storied Polo Lounge on the Saturday night before the Oscars<\/a>. They gathered at the iconic spot at The Beverly Hills Hotel for the 17th annual pre-Oscar dinner co-hosted by Chanel and film producer Charles Finch.<\/p>\n On the red carpet, Jessie Buckley<\/a>, who is the favorite to win best actress<\/a> on Sunday, noted how intimate it felt with only a handful of photographers and reporters looking on.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like a prelude to tomorrow, right?\u201d Buckley quipped. Her Matthieu Blazy-designed<\/a> dress was embellished with dragonflies on the straps. She said it felt like a fairy tale.<\/p>\n The co-director of the animated musical \u201cKPop Demon Hunters,\u201d<\/a> Maggie Kang, was excited to be in the mix, but also thinking about Sunday, when her film is expected to win best animated feature and best original song. There\u2019s also the big performance of its hit song \u201cGolden,”<\/a> which producers have said will celebrate the bigger cultural phenomenon of the movie.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s epic. It\u2019s a lot of drama,\u201d Kang said. \u201cI had tears just watching the rehearsal. It was really amazing. It\u2019s going to be a big cultural moment.\u201d<\/p>\n A very starry gathering<\/p>\n The patio was packed with Oscar nominees, winners, filmmakers and celebrities mingling and sipping drinks. Billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren S\u00e1nchez Bezos chatted with Sigourney Weaver and Jessica Alba, while Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd found himself deep in conversation with Nick Cave. Elsewhere, Stewart posed for a photo with Taylor, and Nicole Kidman caught up with Bobby Cannavale and Rose Byrne, who also found her way back to her \u201cBridesmaids\u201d co-star Maya Rudolph. Hours earlier, Byrne and Rudolph rehearsed<\/a> a bit for the show at the Dolby Theatre. <\/p>\n On another part of the patio, Jagger made his way to \u201cSentimental Value\u201d<\/a> filmmaker Joachim Trier, Molly Sims and her film producer husband Scott Stuber spoke with \u201cLove Story\u201d star Sarah Pidgeon, who was sipping champagne, while \u201cMarty Supreme\u201d<\/a> director Josh Safdie and his cowriter and co-editor Ronald Bronstein tried to make their way toward one another. A glass might have been a casualty of the meeting.<\/p>\n Chanel’s long history with the movies<\/p>\n Chanel has been tied to cinema for nearly a century. Samuel Goldwyn famously invited house founder Gabrielle Chanel to Hollywood in 1931 to design dresses for the likes of Gloria Swanson. Decades later, she was working with French New Wave luminaries both on screen and off, including Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Alain Resnais and Louis Malle. And the collaborations continue to this day. As a nod to the era for Richard Linklater\u2019s \u201cNouvelle Vague,\u201d<\/a> they recreated a haute couture bustier dress from a 1956 collection. <\/p>\n Chanel has also helped support independent filmmaking, including Stewart\u2019s directorial debut \u201cThe Chronology of Water,\u201d film restorations like Wim Wenders\u2019 \u201cParis, Texas,” film festivals and burgeoning talent behind the camera. <\/p>\n \u201cI felt, like, mutually seen and supported by these people since I was a very young person,\u201d Stewart said. \u201cFunctioning in like, you know, this sort of industry, business, Hollywood slash fashion world as a kiddo is a bizarro, and with them it\u2019s always felt incredibly authentic and sort of from a storyteller\u2019s perspective, and so it doesn\u2019t surprise me that they want to support storytellers.\u201d<\/p>\n Finch started throwing parties around the Oscars about 30 years ago, mostly for international filmmakers who didn\u2019t have anywhere to go, he said. The partnership with Chanel has helped make it one of the hottest tickets in town.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing on a film set reminds you that cinema is a universal language. On the film I\u2019m working on now, the crew includes British, American, French, and Portuguese artisans \u2014 all united by one goal: to bring a story to life,\u201d Finch said. \u201cThat spirit is what tonight is about \u2014 and how this dinner originated: celebrating cinema, storytelling, and the storytellers who make the magic happen.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n