Martin Scorsese said the entertainment industry is in a “period of reinventing” cinema during his Screen Talk at the BFI London Film Festival on Saturday, urging young people to use new technology for good as opposed to making “content.”
When asked by director Edgar Wright about becoming somewhat of a spokesperson for the current state of cinema, Scorsese laughed and said, “I don’t want to be the last line of defense.”
“I honestly think it’s thrown back now with all of you. And I really mean this: I don’t know where cinema is going to go,” Scorsese continued. “Why does it have to be the same that it was for the past 90-100 years? It doesn’t. Do we prefer cinema from the last 90-100 years? I do, but I’m old. Younger people are going to see the world around them in a different way … What does one shot mean now? I don’t know anymore. I don’t think it means anything. You all are in the process of a period of reinventing it. It’s quite an extraordinary time, and a lot of it is due to technology.”
Scorsese said that though with that new technology comes more freedom, it should also cause young filmmakers to “rethink what you want to say and how you want to say it.” He added, “Ideally, I hope — I hesitate to use the word — ‘serious’ film could still be made with this new technology and this new world we’re apart of.”
Recalling his days going to movie theaters as a child, Scorsese also wants these more “serious” films to make a comeback at theaters.
“I’m afraid the franchise films will be taking over the theaters,” he said. “I always ask the theater owners to create a space where younger people would say, ‘We want to see this new film,’ which is not a franchise film, in a theater and share with everybody around them. So that they want to go to the theater, that it’s something inviting that doesn’t get them to say they could see it at home. Because the experience of seeing a film with other people is really still the key, I think. But I’m not sure that can be easily achieved at this point.”
Later on, Scorsese joked: “Content is something you eat and throw away … But if you want to have an experience that can enrich your life, it’s different.”
Scorsese is at London Film Festival promoting his latest film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Lily Gladstone. The epic Western drama had its world premiere at Cannes earlier this year, and has since been playing the festival circuit. Based on the book of the same name by David Grann, “Killers of the Flower Moon” follows the government’s investigation into the mysterious murders of members of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma during the 1920s.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” is set to be released in U.S. theater son Oct. 20 via Apple and Paramount Pictures.