Martin Scorsese is turning his attention to a new film about Jesus, the director said on a visit to Italy after bringing his own Killers of the flower moon to the Cannes Film Festival.
“I responded to the pope’s appeal to artists the only way I know how: by coming up with and writing a screenplay for a movie about Jesus,” Scorsese told Antonio Spadaro, editor-in-chief of the Jesuit magazine. La Civilta Cattolica (The Catholic Civilization). “And I’m about to start making it.”
In terms of existing films, Scorsese spoke of his admiration for the immediacy of Jesus in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Matthewhis experience with and the meaning of being The Last Temptation of Christas well as how making Silence represented the next step in his search for Jesus. In the closing moments of the interview, Scorsese became more and more personal, talking about his experience with grace and mercy, and about the presence of violence in his life and in his films.
The conversation between the American filmmaker and the director of Civiltà Cattolica was the focus of the last day of a conference held at Villa Malta in Rome from 25 to 27 May on the theme of ‘The Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination’. The meeting was organized by Jesuit magazine in conjunction with Georgetown University. It gathered more than 40 poets, storytellers, screenwriters and filmmakers from around the world who identify as Catholic or feel that Catholicism has been a formative aspect of their artistic development.
On Tuesday, Scorsese will host the ‘Carta Bianca’ event at Rome’s Casa del Cinema (House of Cinema), where he will present a special selection he has curated by combining his own films with classics that inspired him. The exhibition, held in collaboration with the Bologna Film Library, runs until June 4. Tuesday’s event kicks off at 9 p.m. at the Ettore Scola Theater, a large open-air arena in Rome’s Villa Borghese park. Admission is free, subject to availability. The event will include a screening of Mean streetsone of the filmmaker’s signature masterpieces.
