Director Martin Scorsese to teach online course on filmmaking--Aleteia

'Silence' was the story he was burning to tell. Do you have a story you need to make into a movie?

If you are intrigued by movie making as a career then this class is not for you. So say director Martin Scorsese, who for the first time is teaching an online class in filmmaking.

“But if you need to make movies, if you feel like you can’t rest until you’ve told this particular story that you’re burning to tell, then I could be speaking to you,” continues Scorsese.

The director of Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and, most recently, Silence, among other award-winning films, is offering a 20-lesson course for MasterClass, available for $90.

While nobody would call Scorsese a Catholic filmmaker, his religious upbringing has informed his films.

“I’m a lapsed Catholic. But I am Roman Catholic; there’s no way out of it,” the director has said.

For decades the particular story he had been “burning to tell” was based on Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence, about 17th-century Jesuit missionaries in Japan.

Discussing the appeal of the story, Aleteia’s Matthew Becklo reported that Scorsese said, “I knew that it was going to force me to try and face the ultimate question … the teachings of Christ or Christianity itself … that’s what I learned. And I still find myself going back to that. And I found that the ultimate test, and the ultimate search, really, is in this story.”

Before the movie’s release in 2016, at a screening for 300 Jesuits, Scorsese had a private audience with Pope Francis. The Vatican described the meeting as “very cordial” and the two talked about the experience of missionaries in Japan.

The class, entitled “Learn About the Art of Film,” promises to teach “his approach to filmmaking, from storytelling to editing to working with actors. He deconstructs films and breaks down his craft, changing how you make—and watch—movies.”

Pre-enrollment is available now for the class, which starts in early 2018.