The Cineaste: Martin Scorsese
“There is no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.”
Martin Charles Scorsese (born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. Part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant and influential filmmakers in cinema history. In 1990, he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation. He is a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won an Academy Award, a Palme d’Or, Cannes Film Festival Best Director Award, Silver Lion,Grammy Award, Emmys, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and DGA Awards.
Scorsese’s body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, machismo, modern crime, and gang conflict. Many of his films are also notable for their depiction of violence and liberal use of profanity. He has directed landmark films such as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, and Goodfellas, all of which he collaborated on with actor and close friend Robert De Niro. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed and with eight Best Director nominations to date, he is the most nominated living director.
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