30 Years of The Film Foundation

30 Years of The Film Foundation

63 Episodes

In 1990, Martin Scorsese founded an organization whose stated mission told the world, in no uncertain terms, that movies matter, that the art of cinema and its history is a legacy worth preserving. Three decades later, The Film Foundation is an indispensable pillar of moving-image culture, helping to make possible over 850 restorations so far and raising much-needed awareness of the necessity of film preservation as central to the safeguarding of our cultural heritage. In recognition of thirty years of vital work, the Criterion Channel looks back at a selection of the many brilliant films that, thanks to the efforts of The Film Foundation, have been rescued from the ravages of time for future generations to discover. This series will expand over the next year, with new additions to be announced monthly.

Subscribe Share
30 Years of The Film Foundation
  • 30 Years of The Film Foundation: Martin Scorsese and Ari Aster in Conversation

    Episode 1

    In the following conversation, recorded remotely in 2020, filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Ari Aster discuss the mission, evolution, and ongoing work of The Film Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and preserving motion-picture history that Scorsese established in 1990.

  • Lucía

    Episode 2

    Directed by Humberto Solás • 1968 • Cuba
    Starring Raquel Revuelta, Eslinda Núñez, Adela Legrá

    A breathtaking vision of Cuban revolutionary history wrought with white-hot intensity by Humberto Solás, this operatic epic tells the story of a changing country through the eyes of three women, each na...

  • Pixote

    Episode 3

    Directed by Héctor Babenco • 1981 • Brazil
    Starring Fernando Ramos da Silva, Jorge Julião, Gilberto Moura

    With its bracing blend of unflinching realism and aching humanity, Héctor Babenco's electrifying look at lost youth fighting to survive on the bottom rung of Brazilian society helped put th...

  • Taipei Story

    Episode 4

    Directed by Edward Yang • 1985 • Taiwan
    Starring Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Chin

    Edward Yang’s second feature is a mournful anatomy of a city caught between the past and the present. Made in collaboration with Yang's fellow New Taiwan Cinema master Hou Hsiao-hsien, TAIPEI STORY chronicles the grow...

  • Revenge

    Episode 5

    Directed by Ermek Shinarbaev • 1989 • Soviet Union
    Starring Aleksandr Pan, Valentina Tyo, Kasym Zhakibayev

    A child is raised in Korea to avenge the death of his father’s first child in this decades-spanning tale of obsession and violence, the third collaboration between director Ermek Shinarbaev...

  • The Housemaid

    Episode 6

    Directed by Kim Ki-young • 1960 • South Korea
    Starring Kim Jin-kyu, Ju Jung-nyeo, Lee Eun-shim

    A torrent of sexual obsession, revenge, and betrayal is unleashed under one roof in this venomous melodrama from South Korean master Kim Ki-young. Immensely popular in its home country when it was rele...

  • EIGHT DEADLY SHOTS: Part 1

    Episode 7

    Directed by Mikko Niskanen • 1972 • Finland
    Starring Mikko Niskanen, Tarja-Tuulikki Tarsala, Paavo Pentikäinen

    Newly restored by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, this long-unsung Finnish classic has been hailed by Aki Kaurismäki as “one of the masterpieces of European Cinema.” A relentles...

  • EIGHT DEADLY SHOTS: Part 2

    Episode 8

    Directed by Mikko Niskanen • 1972 • Finland
    Starring Mikko Niskanen, Tarja-Tuulikki Tarsala, Paavo Pentikäinen

    Newly restored by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, this long-unsung Finnish classic has been hailed by Aki Kaurismäki as “one of the masterpieces of European Cinema.” A relentles...

  • EIGHT DEADLY SHOTS: Part 3

    Episode 9

    Directed by Mikko Niskanen • 1972 • Finland
    Starring Mikko Niskanen, Tarja-Tuulikki Tarsala, Paavo Pentikäinen

    Newly restored by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, this long-unsung Finnish classic has been hailed by Aki Kaurismäki as “one of the masterpieces of European Cinema.” A relentles...

  • EIGHT DEADLY SHOTS: Part 4

    Episode 10

    Directed by Mikko Niskanen • 1972 • Finland
    Starring Mikko Niskanen, Tarja-Tuulikki Tarsala, Paavo Pentikäinen

    Newly restored by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, this long-unsung Finnish classic has been hailed by Aki Kaurismäki as “one of the masterpieces of European Cinema.” A relentles...

  • After the Curfew

    Episode 11

    Directed by Usmar Ismail • 1954 • Indonesia
    Starring A. N. Alcaff, Dhalia, Netty Herawaty

    Giving voice to the anguish of a nation fighting for its soul, Usmar Ismail’s AFTER THE CURFEW follows the descent into disillusionment of a former freedom fighter who is unable to readjust to civilian life...

  • Redes

    Episode 12

    Directed by Emilio Gómez Muriel and Fred Zinnemann • 1936 • Mexico
    Starring Silvio Hernández del Valle, Antonio Lara, Miguel Figueroa

    Early in his career, the Austrian-born future Oscar winner Fred Zinnemann codirected with Emilio Gómez Muriel the politically and emotionally searing REDES. In th...

  • Touki bouki

    Episode 13

    Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty • 1973 • Senegal
    Starring Magaye Niang, Mareme Niang, Aminata Fall

    With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid, fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s. In this French New Wave-influenced fantasy-drama, tw...

  • Trances

    Episode 14

    Directed by Ahmed El Maânouni • 1981 • Morocco

    The beloved Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane is the dynamic subject of this captivating musical documentary. Storytellers through song, with connections to political theater, the band became an international sensation (Western music critics have ofte...

  • The Color of Pomegranates

    Episode 15

    Directed by Sergei Parajanov • 1969 • Soviet Union

    A breathtaking fusion of poetry, ethnography, and cinema, Sergei Parajanov’s masterwork overflows with unforgettable images and sounds. In a series of tableaux that blend the tactile with the abstract, THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES revives the splen...

  • Memories of Underdevelopment

    Episode 16

    Directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea • 1968 • Cuba
    Starring Sergio Corrieri, Daisy Granados, Omar Valdés

    This film by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea is the most renowned work in the history of Cuban cinema. After his wife and family flee in the wake of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the bourgeois intellectual Serg...

  • Manila in the Claws of Light

    Episode 17

    Directed by Lino Brocka • 1975 • Philippines
    Starring Hilda Koronel, Rafael Roco Jr., Lou Salvador Jr.

    Lino Brocka achieved international acclaim with this candid portrait of 1970s Manila, a breakout example of the more serious-minded filmmaking the director had turned to after building a career...

  • Limite

    Episode 18

    Directed by Mario Peixoto • 1931 • Brazil
    Starring Olga Breno, Taciana Rei, Carmen Santos

    An astonishing creation, LIMITE is the only feature by the Brazilian director and author Mário Peixoto, made when he was just twenty-two years old. Inspired by a haunting André Kertész photograph on the cov...

  • Law of the Border

    Episode 19

    Directed by Lütfi Akad • 1966 • Turkey
    Starring Yılmaz Güney

    Set along the Turkish-Syrian frontier, this terse, elemental tale of smugglers contending with a changing social landscape brought together two giants of Turkish cinema. Director Lütfi Ö. Akad had already made some of his country’s ...

  • Dry Summer

    Episode 20

    Directed by Metin Erksan • 1964 • Turkey
    Starring Erol Taş, Hülya Koçyiğit, Ulvi Doğan

    Winner of the prestigious Golden Bear at the 1964 Berlin International Film Festival, Metin Erksan’s wallop of a melodrama follows the machinations of an unrepentantly selfish tobacco farmer who builds a dam t...

  • A River Called Titas

    Episode 21

    Directed by Ritwik Ghatak • 1973 • Bangladesh
    Starring Kabari Choudhury, Roushan Jamil, Prabir Mitra

    The Bengali filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak’s stunningly beautiful, elegiac saga concerns the tumultuous lives of people in fishing villages along the banks of the Titas River in pre-Partition East Benga...

  • The Phantom of the Monastery

    Episode 22

    Directed by Fernando de Fuentes • 1934 • Mexico
    Starring Marta Roel, Enrique del Campo, Carlos Villatoro

    Lost in the forest, a trio of hikers enmeshed in an adulterous love triangle take refuge in a strange monastery that seems frozen in time. As bizarre portents—a bat-shaped shadow without a so...

  • L’Atalante

    Episode 23

    Directed by Jean Vigo • 1934 • France

    In Jean Vigo's hands, an unassuming tale of conjugal love becomes an achingly romantic reverie of desire and hope. Jean (Jean Dasté), a barge captain, marries Juliette (Dita Parlo), an innocent country girl, and the two climb aboard Jean's boat, the L'Atalan...

  • Dos monjes

    Episode 24

    Directed by Juan Bustillo Oro • 1934 • Mexico
    Starring Víctor Urruchúa, Carlos Villatoro, Magda Haller

    This vividly stylized, broodingly intense early Mexican sound melodrama by Juan Bustillo Oro hinges on an audacious flashback structure. When an ailing monk recognizes a new brother at his cloi...