How Martin Scorsese helped rescue Britain’s most important filmmakers from anonymity

For the past three decades, few have been more dedicated to preserving the legacy of British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger than Thelma Schoonmaker and Martin Scorsese. Schoonmaker, one of cinema’s most renowned editors, and Scorsese, for many the world’s greatest living director, have made it their business to ensure audiences remember the men behind such indelible movies as The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus and A Matter of Life and Death.

The pair – Powell died in 1990 at the age of 84, Pressburger in 1988 at the age of 85 – were cinematic fabulists, responsible for visually rich Technicolor fantasias, the likes of which have never been seen before or since. Schoonmaker and Scorsese have been a similar dream-team ever since their first collaboration on the 1980 boxing saga , for which Schoonmaker won an Oscar – her first of three, followed by wins for editing (2004) and (2006). It was in the immediate aftermath of that Scorsese introduced Schoonmaker to Powell, who