Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci (1941–2018) was an Italian filmmaker and screenwriter regarded as one of the great directors of post-war world cinema. Born in Parma to the poet and critic Attilio Bertolucci, he began publishing poetry in his teens before being taken on by family friend Pier Paolo Pasolini as first assistant on Accattone in 1961. He directed his own debut feature at twenty-two and reached full maturity with The Conformist (1970), whose visual style influenced a generation of filmmakers. His career spans the controversy of Last Tango in Paris (1972) — which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Director — the political epic 1900 (1976), and The Last Emperor (1987), an account of the deposed Chinese emperor Pu Yi that won nine Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. He continued to make films into his seventies, including The Dreamers and Me and You.