Kundun - About The Filmmaker

Kundun: About The Filmmaker

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MARTIN SCORSESE (Director) is the director of "Mean Streets," "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," "Taxi Driver," "New York, New York," "The Last Waltz," "Raging Bull," "The King of Comedy," "After Hours," "The Color of Money," "The Last Temptation of Christ," the "Life Lessons" segment of "New York Stories," "GoodFellas," "Cape Fear," "The Age of Innocence" and "Casino."

A graduate of New York University, Scorsese worked as an editor until his first feature, "Who's That Knocking At My Door?" caught the attention of Roger Corman, who asked him to direct "Boxcar Bertha." He returned to New York to film "Mean Streets" in 1973 and his work attracted the critical acclaim and national attention which launched his career.

Scorsese co-directed and co-wrote the British Film Institute/Channel 4 documentary, "A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies," which celebrated one hundred years of filmmaking. In addition, he created "Italianamerican," a documentary about his parents.

He is one of the founders of the Film Foundation which promotes the restoration of films by studios and archives. In 1992 he launched Martin Scorsese Presents, a company dedicated to the restoration and distribution of classic films.

Scorsese has also sought to encourage new filmmakers through his producing efforts on "The Grifters," "Mad Dog and Glory," "Naked In New York," "Search and Destroy" and "Grace Of My Heart."

He is a recent recipient of the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award.

MELISSA MATHISON's (Written by/Co-Producer) screenwriting credits include "The Indian in the Cupboard," "E.T.," "The Escape Artist" and "The Black Stallion." She received an Academy Award® nomination for "E.T."

BARBARA DE FINA (Producer) was the executive producer of "GoodFellas," which received an Academy Award® nomination for Best Picture in 1990 and has produced Martin Scorsese's "Casino," "The Age of Innocence," "Cape Fear," the "Life Lessons" segment of "New York Stories," "The Last Temptation of Christ" and "The Color of Money," as well as Michael Jackson's music video, "Bad."

She also executive produced Stephen Frears' "The Grifters" and produced "Mad Dog and Glory," which starred Robert De Niro and Bill Murray.

De Fina worked on over fifteen films as a production coordinator including Paul Mazursky's "An Unmarried Woman," "The Gambler," "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3," "The Valachi Papers" and Woody Allen's "Interiors."

She then became associate producer for King/Hitzig Productions, where she developed "Cattle Annie and Little Britches," "Happy Birthday, Gemini" and "Wolfen," as well as a number of TV movies and pilots.

She worked as unit manager/associate producer with Jay Presson Allen on Sidney Lumet's "Prince of the City" and as unit manager on a number of Universal and Spelling/Goldberg television productions, including "Paper Dolls" and the feature film "The Chosen."

She began her association with Martin Scorsese as unit manager during post production of "King of Comedy."

ROGER DEAKINS' A.S.C., B.S.C. (Director of Photography) motion picture credits include: "Courage Under Fire," "Dead Man Walking," "Fargo," "The Shawshank Redemption," "The Hudsucker Proxy," "The Secret Garden," "Passion Fish," "Thunderheart," "Mountains of the Moon," "Air America," "Barton Fink," "A Long Walk Home," "Pascali's Island," "White Mischief," "Stormy Monday," "Defence of the Realm," "Sid and Nancy," "The Kitchen Toto," "1984" and "Another Time, Another Place."

As a documentary filmmaker Deakins made "Eritrea Behind The Lines," about the liberation war in Eritrea, "Around The World With Ridgeway," about life aboard one of the entrants in a round the world yacht race, "When The World Changed," a film following the lives of five patients in a mental hospital and anthropological documentaries in the Sudan, India and West Africa.

DANTE FERRETTI (Production Designer/Costume Designer) has received four Academy Award® nominations, for "Interview With the Vampire," "The Age of Innocence," "Hamlet" and "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen."

He is the winner of two BAFTA Awards for "Interview With the Vampire" and "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" (both of which also earned him the Nastro d'Argento award, and for the latter he received the Ciak d'Oro Prize), as well as four David di Donatello Awards, for "The Voice of the Moon" (also the Ciak d'Oro Prize), "The Name of the Rose," "And The Ship Sails On" (Nastro d'Argento awards for both), and "La Nuit De Varennes." He also won the Nastro d'Argento award for "Casino" and "The Age of Innocence," and was presented with the UBU Prize of "Storie d'Ordinairia Follia" and "The Skin."

His other motion picture credits include five films with Fellini, "The Voice of the Moon," "Ginger and Fred" (Nastro d'Argento award and Ciak d'Oro Prize), "And The Ship Sails On," "City of Women" (Nastro d'Argento award), and "Prova d'Orchestra" and five films with Pier Paolo Pasolini, "120 Days of Sodom," "Arabian Nights," "Canterbury Tales," "Decameron" and "Medea," as well as Marco Ferreri's "Storie D'Ordinaria Follia," Liliana Cavani's "The Skin" and Elio Petri's "The Working Class Goes To Heaven."

Ferretti has also designed opera productions staged in Milan, Rome, Turin, Florence, Paris, Buenos Aires, Antwerp and Zurich.

THELMA SCHOONMAKER (Film Editor) won an Academy Award® and a BAFTA Award for "Raging Bull" and an Academy Award® nomination and a second BAFTA Award for "GoodFellas."

She was born in Algiers, Algeria, where her father worked for the Standard Oil Company. She grew up on the island of Aruba and attended Cornell University, where she studied political science and Russian, intending to become a diplomat.

While doing graduate work at Columbia University, she answered a New York Times advertisement that offered on-the-job training as an assistant film editor.

Her exposure to the field sparked a desire to learn more about editing. During a six week summer course at New York University's film school, she met Martin Scorsese and Michael Wadleigh. Within a few years she was editing Scorsese's first feature "Who's That Knocking At My Door?" She edited a series of films and commercials before supervising the editing of Wadleigh's 1971 film, "Woodstock," for which she was nominated for an Academy Award®.

She has worked on all of Martin Scorsese's films since "Raging Bull," "The King of Comedy," "After Hours," "The Color of Money," "The Last Temptation of Christ," the "Life Lessons" episode of "New York Stories," "Cape Fear," "The Age of Innocence" and "Casino."

She recently edited Scorsese's documentary, "A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies," a BFI/Channel 4 co-production.

In addition to her editing, she works tirelessly to promote the films and writing of her late husband, the director Michael Powell.

Born in Baltimore, PHILIP GLASS (Music by) discovered music in his father's radio repair shop. In addition to servicing radios, Ben Glass carried a line of records and, when certain ones sold poorly, he would take them home and play them for his three children, trying to discover why they didn't appeal to customers. These happened to be recordings of great chamber works, and future composer Philip rapidly become familiar with Beethoven quartets, Schubert sonatas, Shostakovitch symphonies and other music.

Glass began the violin at age 6 and become serious about music when he took up the flute at 8. By the time he was 15, he had become frustrated with the limited flute repertoire as well as with musical life in post-war Baltimore. During his second year in high school, he applied for admission to the University of Chicago, passed and, with his parent's encouragement, moved to Chicago where he supported himself with part-time jobs waiting tables and loading airplanes at airports. He majored in mathematics and philosophy, and during off hours practiced piano and concentrated on such composers as Ives and Webern.

At 19, Glass graduated from the University of Chicago, determined to become a composer. He moved to New York and attended the Juilliard School. By then he had abandoned the 12-tone techniques he had been using in Chicago and preferred American composers like Aaron Copeland and William Schuman.

By the time he was 23, Glass had studied with Vincent Persichetti, Darius Milhaud and William Bergsma. He had rejected serialism and preferred such maverick composers as Harry Partch, Ives, Moondog, Henry Cowell and Virgil Thompson, but he still had not found his own voice. Still searching, he moved to Paris and spent two years of intensive study under Nadia Boulanger.

In Paris, he was hired by a filmmaker to transcribe the Indian music of Ravi Shankar in notation readable to French musicians. In the process, he discovered the techniques to Indian music. Glass promptly renounced his previous music. After researching music in North Africa, India and the Himalayas, he returned to New York, and began applying Eastern techniques to his own work.

By 1974, he had composed a large collection of new music, not only for use by the theatre company Mabou Mines (Glass was one of the co-founders of the company), but mainly for his own performing group, the Philip Glass Ensemble. This period culminated in "Music in 12 Parts," a three-hour summation of Glass' new music, and reached its apogee in 1976 with the Philip Glass/Robert Wilson opera "Einstein on the Beach," the 4-1/2 hour epic now considered a landmark in 20th century music-theater.

Glass' output since "Einstein" has ranged from opera ("Satyagraha, Akhnaten," "The Making of the Representative for Planet 8," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Juniper Tree," "Hydrogen Jukebox") to film scores ("Koyaanisqatsi," "Mishima," "The Thin Blue Line," "Powaqqatsi," "A Brief History of Time" and "Candyman") to dance ("A Descent into the Maelstrom" and "In the Upper Room"), and such unclassifiable theatre pieces as "The Photographer," "1000 Airplanes on the Roof," "The Mysteries" and "What's So Funny?"

Among his recently completed works are "Itaipu," a large-scale work for chorus and orchestra; "Low Symphony," based on David Bowie's album Low; "Symphony No. 2," commissioned by the Brooklyn Philharmonic; "The Voyage," an opera; "Symphony No. 3" commissioned for the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra; "The Witches of Venice," a ballet created by Beni Motressor and commissioned by Teatro alla Scala, and two operas based on the films of Jean Cocteau, "Orphée" and "La Belle et La Bête." Current projects include three collaborations with Robert Wilson: "White Raven," an opera commissioned by Portugal to celebrate its history of discovery, "Monsters of Grace," a music/theater work with the Philip Glass Ensemble scheduled to premiere in Spring of 1998, and TSE, a music/theater installation. The final piece in the Cocteau trilogy, a dance/theater work based on "Les Enfants Terribles" premiered in May of 1996 and is presently on tour. "The Heroes Symphony," based on the David Bowie work Heroes was released by Point Music.

Choreographer Twyla Tharp has created a dance piece for "The Heroes Symphony" which is on tour through Fall, 1997.

Glass' other recent motion picture scores include "The Secret Agent" and "Bent."

LAURA FATTORI (Executive Producer) has served as executive producer or line producer on a long list of motion pictures and made-for-television films. Among her feature credits are "Only You," "Cliffhanger," "Year of the Gun," "Vanille-Fraise," "The Last Temptation of Christ" and "Rent A Cop." As unit production manager or location manger she worked on "Bedroom Window," "Red Sonia," "The Black Stallion," "Prisoner of Zenda," "The Eiger Sanction," "Slaughterhouse Five" and "The Abdication," among many others.

For television, Ms. Fattori line produced the 1995 Emmy Award-winning "Joseph" segment of the acclaimed miniseries "The Bible." She also line produced the "Moses" and "Abraham" portions of that popular presentation.

Ms. Fattori has also contributed her talents to innumerable commercials.

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