“I’m not sure, I hope it can,” he says. “I may be wrong on this, but the problem is that [the film landscape] is fragmented. Films are made for a certain group… you have films made for different groups of different gender, different sexuality etc. They should be films, all together.”
His mission to ‘save’ film history
With the fate of moviegoing uncertain, Scorsese is more invested than ever in preserving our celluloid history, and restoring it. In 1990, he helped create The Film Foundation as an organisation dedicated to film preservation; since it was founded, it has been involved in the restoration of more than 1,000 works. Among its recent triumphs is the restoration, with the BFI National Archive, of Pressure, Britain’s first ever black feature film, which was released in 1976 and directed by Sir Horace Ové, who died last month. The world premiere of the Pressure restoration will be screened at both the London and New York Film Festivals on 11 October.
Comparing old movies to ancient books, Scorsese believes they need to be preserved. “The picture it gives us … [the] representation of who we are or who we were, how we’ve shifted, the good things, the shameful things – these can’t be swept under the rug.”
What next for him?
Scorsese will turn 81 in November, and there are films he would still like to make. In deciding where to devote his energies, he remembers the advice of legendary Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami: “He looked at me and he said, ‘Don’t do anything you don’t want to do. Just don’t.’ And I know what he meant.”
