What year did Scorsese co-found the Film Foundation? The answer is 1990.
Martin Scorsese co-founded The Film Foundation in 1990 with a group of prominent filmmakers concerned about the survival of motion-picture history. The U.S. nonprofit focuses on film preservation, restoration, exhibition, and education, helping ensure that important movies remain available to future audiences.
The foundation emerged from Scorsese’s long-running preservation campaign. He had publicly advocated for saving endangered films since 1980, when deterioration, color fading, and the instability of older film stock threatened huge parts of cinema’s heritage. Its original board included filmmakers such as Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, George Lucas, Sydney Pollack, Robert Redford, Steven Spielberg, and Stanley Kubrick.
The date can be confused with later milestones. The foundation became affiliated with the Directors Guild of America in 2002, while its African Film Heritage Project formally began in 2017. Its work has included grants, educational initiatives such as The Story of Movies, and collaborations with archives and international organizations. By 2021, the foundation and its partners had restored more than 900 films.