Film series: Four by Francis Ford Coppola
This semester at Cornell Cinema, we are pleased to present four films by the acclaimed filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola.
Francis Ford Coppola is widely celebrated as one of the most talented American filmmakers with contributions like The Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now (1979), and The Conversation (1974) all frequently cited among the greatest films ever made.
Born in Detroit in 1939 then growing up in Queens, NY, Coppola discovered a fascination with movie making at young age. He studied drama at Hofstra University before pursuing a masters in film at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). There, Coppola met legendary producer Roger Corman and began working on B-list films. After his student films caught the attention of studio executives, he began writing and directing and formed his own production company American Zoetrope. Their first project was George Lucas’s Star Wars precursor THX-1138 (1971).
Coppola won his first Academy Award for Patton (1970), a film he co-wrote with Franklin J. Schaffner and Edmund H. North, before being hired to co-write and direct The Godfather (1972), which is an adaptation of the novel by Mario Puzo. The film won three and was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and spurred two sequels — only one if which will be included in our Cornell Cinema program. Coppola's Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now (1979) took years to make and its numerous production difficulties are chronicled in the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991).
Since the 1990s, Coppola has worked mostly as a producer, including for a number of his daughter Sofia Coppola's films, but released a new film Megalopolis in 2024 and in 2025 received a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute (AFI).
