name	Michelangelo Antonioni
birth date	September 29, 1912
birth place	Ferrara, Italy
death date	July 30, 2007
death place	Rome, Italy
occupation	Film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer
years active	1942–2004
spouse	Letizia Balboni (1942–1954)Enrica Antonioni (1986–2007) }}

Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (29 September 1912 – 30 July 2007) was an Italian modernist film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer.

Personal life

Antonioni was born into a prosperous family of landowners in Ferrara, Emilia Romagna, in northern Italy. He was the son of Elisabetta (née Roncagli) and Ismaele Antonioni. The director explained to Italian film critic Aldo Tassone:

: My childhood was a happy one. My mother... was a warm and intelligent woman who had been a labourer in her youth. My father also was a good man. Born into a working-class family, he succeeded in obtaining a comfortable position through evening courses and hard work. My parents gave me free rein to do what I wanted: with my brother, we spent most of our time playing outside with friends. Curiously enough, our friends were invariably proletarian, and poor. The poor still existed at that time, you recognized them by their clothes. But even in the way they wore their clothes, there was a fantasy, a frankness that made me prefer them to boys of bourgeois families. I always had sympathy for young women of working-class families, even later when I attended university: they were more authentic and spontaneous.

While still a child, Antonioni was fond of drawing and music. A precocious violinist, he gave his first concert at the age of nine. Although he abandoned the violin with the discovery of cinema in his teens, drawing would remain a lifelong passion. "I have never drawn, even as a child, either puppets or silhouettes but rather facades of houses and gates. One of my favourite games consisted of organising towns. Ignorant in architecture, I constructed buildings and streets crammed with little figures. I invented stories for them. These childhood ''happenings'' - I was eleven years old - were like little films."

Upon graduation from the University of Bologna with a degree in economics, he started writing for the local Ferrara newspaper ''Il Corriere Padano'' in 1935 as a film journalist.

In 1940, Antonioni moved to Rome, where he worked for ''Cinema'', the official Fascist film magazine edited by Vittorio Mussolini. However, Antonioni was fired a few months afterward. Later that year he enrolled at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia to study film technique, but left it after three months. He was drafted into the army afterwards.

Antonioni died aged 94 on July 30, 2007 in Rome, the same day that another renowned film director, Ingmar Bergman, also died. Antonioni lay in state at City Hall in Rome where a large screen showed black-and-white footage of him among his film sets and behind-the-scenes. He was buried in his home town of Ferrara on August 2, 2007.

Career

Early film work

In 1942, Antonioni co-wrote ''Un pilota ritorna'' with Roberto Rossellini and worked as assistant director on Enrico Fulchignoni's ''I due Foscari''. In 1943, he travelled to France to assist Marcel Carné on ''Les visiteurs du soir'' and then began a series of short films with ''Gente del Po'' (1943), a story of poor fishermen of the Po valley. After the Liberation, the film stock was stored in the East-Italian Fascist "Republic of Salò" and could not be recovered and edited until 1947 (the complete footage was never retrieved). These films were neorealist in style, being semi-documentary studies of the lives of ordinary people.

However, Antonioni's first full-length feature film ''Cronaca di un amore'' (1950) broke away from neorealism by depicting the middle classes. He continued to do so in a series of other films : ''I vinti'' ("The Vanquished", 1952), a trio of stories, each set in a different country (France, Italy and England), about juvenile delinquency; ''La signora senza camelie'' (''The Lady Without Camellias'', 1953) about a young film star and her fall from grace; and ''Le amiche'' (''The Girlfriends'', 1955) about middle class women in Turin. ''Il grido'' (''The Outcry'', 1957) was a return to working class stories, depicting a factory worker and his daughter. Each of these stories is about social alienation.

International recognition

In ''Le Amiche'' (1955), Antonioni experimented with a radical new style: instead of a conventional narrative, he presented a series of apparently disconnected events, and he used long takes as part of his film making style. Antonioni returned to their use in ''L'avventura'' (1960), which became his first international success. At the Cannes Film Festival it received a mixture of cheers and boos, but the film was popular in art house cinemas around the world. ''La notte'' (1961), starring Jeanne Moreau and Marcello Mastroianni, and ''L'eclisse'' (1962), starring Alain Delon, followed ''L'avventura''. These three films are commonly referred to as a trilogy because they are stylistically similar and all concerned with the alienation of man in the modern world. ''La notte'' won the Golden Bear award at the 11th Berlin International Film Festival, His first color film, ''Il deserto rosso'' (''Red Desert'', 1964), deals with similar themes, and is sometimes considered the fourth film of the "trilogy". All of these films star Monica Vitti, his lover during that period.

Antonioni then signed a deal with producer Carlo Ponti that would allow artistic freedom on three films in English to be released by MGM. The first, ''Blowup'' (1966), set in Swinging London, was a major success. The script was loosely based on the short story ''The Devil's Drool'' (otherwise known as ''Blow Up'') by Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar. Although it dealt with the challenging theme of the impossibility of objective standards and the ever-doubtable truth of memory, it was a successful and popular hit with audiences, no doubt helped by its sex scenes, which were explicit for the time. It starred David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave. The second film was ''Zabriskie Point'' (1970), his first set in America and with a counterculture theme. The soundtrack carried popular artists such as Pink Floyd (who wrote new music specifically for the film), the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones. However, its release was a critical and commercial disaster. The third, ''The Passenger'' (1975), starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider, received critical praise, but also did poorly at the box office. It was out of circulation for many years, but was re-released for a limited theatrical run in October 2005 and has subsequently been released on DVD.

In 1972, in between ''Zabriskie Point'' and ''The Passenger'', Antonioni was invited by the Mao government of the People's Republic of China to visit the country. He made the documentary ''Chung Kuo, Cina'', but it was severely denounced by the Chinese authorities as "anti-Chinese" and "anti-communist". The documentary had its first showing in China on November 25, 2004 in Beijing with a film festival hosted by the Beijing Film Academy to honor the works of Michelangelo Antonioni.

Later career

In 1980, Antonioni made ''Il mistero di Oberwald'' (''The Mystery of Oberwald''), an experiment in the electronic treatment of color, recorded in video and then translated to film, featuring Monica Vitti once more. It is based on Jean Cocteau's play ''L'Aigle à deux têtes'' (''The Eagle With Two Heads''). ''Identificazione di una donna'' (''Identification of a Woman'', 1982), filmed in Italy, deals one more time with the recursive subjects of his Italian trilogy. In 1985, Antonioni suffered a stroke, which left him partly paralyzed and unable to speak. However, he continued to make films, including ''Beyond the Clouds'' (1995), for which Wim Wenders filmed some scenes. As Wenders has explained, Antonioni rejected almost all the material filmed by Wenders during the editing, except for a few short interludes. They shared the FIPRESCI Prize at the Venice Film Festival with ''Cyclo''.

In 1994 he was given the Honorary Academy Award "in recognition of his place as one of the cinema's master visual stylists." It was presented to him by Jack Nicholson. Months later, the statuette was stolen by burglars and had to be replaced. Previously, he had been nominated for Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay for ''Blowup''. Antonioni's final film, made when he was in his 90s, was a segment of the anthology film ''Eros'' (2004), entitled "Il filo pericoloso delle cose" ("The Dangerous Thread of Things"). The short film's episodes are framed by dreamy paintings and the song "Michelangelo Antonioni", composed and sung by Caetano Veloso. However, it was not well-received internationally; in America, for example, Roger Ebert claimed that it was neither erotic nor about eroticism. The U.S. DVD release of the film includes another 2004 short film by Antonioni, ''Lo sguardo di Michelangelo'' (''The Gaze of Michelangelo'').

Reception

Film historian Virginia Wright Wexman describes Antonioni's perspective on the world as that of a "postreligious Marxist and existentialist intellectual." In a speech at Cannes about ''L'Avventura'', Antonioni said that in the modern age of reason and science, mankind still lives by "a rigid and stereotyped morality which all of us recognize as such and yet sustain out of cowardice and sheer laziness". He said his films explore the paradox that "we have examined those moral attitudes very carefully, we have dissected them and analyzed them to the point of exhaustion. We have been capable of all this, but we have not been capable of finding new ones." Nine years later he expressed a similar attitude in an interview, saying that he loathed the word 'morality': "When man becomes reconciled to nature, when space becomes his true background, these words and concepts will have lost their meaning, and we will no longer have to use them."

One of the recurring themes in Antonioni's films is characters who suffer from ennui and whose lives are empty and purposeless aside from the gratification of pleasure or the pursuit of material wealth. Film historian David Bordwell writes that in his films, "Vacations, parties and artistic pursuits are vain efforts to conceal the characters' lack of purpose and emotion. Sexuality is reduced to casual seduction, enterprise to the pursuit of wealth at any cost." Antonioni's films tend to have spare plots and dialogue, and much of the screen time is spent lingering on certain settings, such as the seven-minute continuous take in ''The Passenger'', or the scene in ''L'Eclisse'' in which Monica Vitti stares curiously at electrical posts accompanied by ambient sounds of wires clanking. Virginia Wright Wexman summarizes his style in the following terms: "The camera is placed at a medium distance more often than close in, frequently moving slowly; the shots are permitted to extend uninterrupted by cutting. Thus each image is more complex, containing more information than it would in a style in which a smaller area is framed ... In Antonioni's work we must regard his images at length; he forces our full attention by continuing the shot long after others would cut away." Antonioni is also noted for exploiting colour as a significant expressive element of his cinematic style, especially in ''Il deserto rosso'', his first colour film.

Bordwell explains that Antonioni's films were extremely influential on subsequent art films: "More than any other director, he encouraged filmmakers to explore elliptical and open-ended narrative". Film director Akira Kurosawa considered Antonioni one of the most interesting filmmakers. Stanley Kubrick listed ''La Notte'' as one of his ten favorite films in a 1963 Poll. Andrei Tarkovsky also listed Antonioni as one of his favorite filmmakers. Miklós Jancsó considers Antonioni as his master.

Antonioni's spare style and purposeless characters, however, have not received universal acclaim. Ingmar Bergman stated in 2002 that he considered some of Antonioni's films, including ''Blowup'' and ''La notte'', masterpieces for their detached and dreamlike quality, but found the other films boring and noted that he had never understood why Antonioni was held in such esteem. Orson Welles regretted the Italian director's use of the long take: "I don't like to dwell on things. It's one of the reasons I'm so bored with Antonioni - the belief that, because a shot is good, it's going to get better if you keep looking at it. He gives you a full shot of somebody walking down a road. And you think, 'Well, he's not going to carry that woman all the way up that road.' But he ''does''. And then she leaves and you go on looking at the road after she's gone."

American actor Peter Weller, whom Antonioni directed in ''Beyond the Clouds'', explained in a 1996 interview: "There is no director living except maybe Kurosawa, Bergman, or Antonioni that I would fall down and do anything for. I met Antonioni three years ago in Taormina at a film festival. I introduced myself and told him that I adored his movies, his contributions to film, because he was the first guy who really started making films about the reality of the vacuity between people, the difficulty in traversing this space between lovers in modern day... and he never gives you an answer, Antonioni – that's the beautiful thing."

Filmography

Feature films

''Cronaca di un amore'' (''Chronicle of a Love'', 1950)

''I vinti'' (''The Vanquished'', 1952)

''La signora senza camelie'' (''Camille Without Camellias'', 1953)

''Le amiche'' (''The Girl Friends'', 1955)

''Il grido'' (''The Outcry'', 1957)

''L'avventura'' (''The Adventure'', 1960)

''La Notte'' (''The Night'', 1961)

''Eclipse'' (1962)

''Red Desert'' (1964)

''Blowup'' (1966)

''Zabriskie Point'' (1970)

''Chung Kuo, Cina'' (documentary, 1972)

''The Passenger'' (1975)

''Il mistero di Oberwald'' (''The Mystery of Oberwald'', 1981)

''Identificazione di una donna'' (''Identification of a Woman'', 1982)

''Al di là delle nuvole'' (''Beyond the Clouds'', 1995 - co-credited with Wim Wenders)

''Eros (segment : "Il filo pericoloso delle cose") (2004) co-direction with Steven Soderbergh and Wong Kar-Wai.

Short films

''Gente del Po'' (''People of the Po'', 10 min, shot in 1943, released in 1947)

''N.U. (Nettezza urbana)'' (''Dustmen'', 11 min, 1948)

''Oltre l'oblio'' (1948)

''Roma-Montevideo'' (1948)

''L'amorosa menzogna'' (''Loving Lie'', 10 min, 1949)

''Sette cani e un vestito'' (''Seven Reeds, One Suit'', 10 min, 1949)

''Bomarzo'' (1949)

''Ragazze in bianco'' (''Girls in white'', 1949)

''Superstizione'' (''Superstition'', 9 min, 1949)

''La villa dei mostri'' (''The House of Monsters'', 10 min, 1950)

''La funivia del Faloria'' (''The Funicular of Mount Faloria'', 10 min, 1950)

''Inserto girato a Lisca Bianca'' (TV, 8 min, 1983)

''Kumbha Mela'' (18 min, 1989)

''Noto, Mandorli, Vulcano, Stromboli, Carnevale'' (''Volcanoes and Carnival'', 8 min, 1993)

''Sicilia'' (9 min, 1997)

''Lo sguardo di Michelangelo'' (''The Gaze of Michelangelo'', 15 min, 2004)

Episodes in omnibus films

''Tentato suicido'' ("When Love Fails", episode in ''L'amore in città'', 1953)

''Il provino'' (segment in ''I tre volti'' — The Three Faces of a Woman, 1965)

''Roma'' (segment in ''12 registi per 12 città'', promotional film for Soccer World Championship, 1989)

''Il filo pericoloso delle cose'' ("The Dangerous Thread of Things", segment in ''Eros'', 2004)

References

Notes

Bibliography

Bogdanovich, Peter. ''This Is Orson Welles''. New York: HarperPerennial, 1992. ISBN 0-06-092439-X

Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson. ''Film History: An Introduction''. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. ISBN 0-07-038429-0

Ciment, Michel. ''Kubrick: The Definitive Edition''. Faber & Faber, 2003. ISBN 0-571-21108-9

Cook, David A. ''A History of Narrative Film''. New York: Norton, 2004. ISBN 0-393-97868-0

Eco, Umberto and Christine Leefeldt. "De Interpretatione, or the Difficulty of Being Marco Polo (On the Occasion of Antonioni's China Film)". ''Film Quarterly'' 30.4 (1977): Special Book Issue: 8-12.

Wenders, Wim. ''My Time With Antonioni: The Diary of an Extraordinary Experience''. London: Faber & Faber, 2000. ISBN 0-571-20076-1

Wexman, Virginia Wright. ''A History of Film''. Boston: Pearson, 2006. ISBN 0-205-44976-X

Samuels, Charles Thomas. ''Encountering Directors''. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1972. ISBN 0-399-11023-2

Tassone, Aldo. ''Antonioni''. Paris: Flammarion, 2007. ISBN 978-2-08-120301-3

Further reading

Antonioni, Michelangelo. ''Michelangelo Antonioni: An Introduction''. Trans. by Scott Sullivan. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963.

Arrowsmith, William and Ted Perry, ed. ''Antonioni: the poet of images''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Brunette, Peter. ''The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni''. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Chatman, Seymour. ''Antonioni or the Surface of the World''. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1985.

Lyons, Robert Joseph. ''Michelangelo Antonioni's Neo-Realism: A World View.'' Diss. Bowling Green State University, 1973.

Documentaries on Antonioni

Antonioni, Enrica. ''Fare un film per me è vivere'' (''Making a Film for Me is to Live''), 1996. (52')

Di Carlo, Carlo. ''Antonioni su Antonioni'' (''Antonioni on Antonioni''), 2008. (55')

—. ''Antonioni: Lo sguardo che cambio il cinema'' (''Antonioni: the Gaze that Changed Cinema''), 2001. (60')

Labarthe, André S. ''L'ultima sequenza di'' Professione: Reporter (''The Last Sequence of'' The Passenger), 1974. (12')

Miccichè, Lino. ''Antonioni visto da Antonioni'' (''Antonioni Seen by Antonioni''), 1978. (28')

External links

Antonioni Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)

En la muerte de Antonioni (written in Spanish)

Photography as a Framing Art

Category:Academy Honorary Award recipients Category:European Film Awards winners (people) Category:Italian film directors Category:Italian screenwriters Category:Italian music video directors Category:People from Ferrara Category:1912 births Category:2007 deaths

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bgcolour	#EEDD82
name	Michelangelo
birth name	Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
birth date	March 06, 1475
birth place	Caprese near Arezzo, Republic of Florence (present-day Tuscany, Italy)
death date	February 18, 1564
death place	Rome, Papal States (present-day Italy)
nationality	Italian
field	Sculpture, painting, architecture, and poetry
training	Apprentice to Domenico Ghirlandaio
movement	High Renaissance
works	''David'', ''The Creation of Adam'', ''Pietà'', Sistine Chapel Ceiling
signature	Michelangelo Signature2.svg }}

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.

Michelangelo's output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. Two of his best-known works, the ''Pietà'' and ''David'', were sculpted before he turned thirty. Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and ''The Last Judgment'' on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the Laurentian Library. At 74 he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan, the western end being finished to Michelangelo's design, the dome being completed after his death with some modification.

In a demonstration of Michelangelo's unique standing, he was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive. Two biographies were published of him during his lifetime; one of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have currency in art history for centuries. In his lifetime he was also often called ''Il Divino'' ("the divine one"). One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his ''terribilità'', a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.

Life and works

Early life

Michelangelo was born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese near Arezzo, Tuscany. (Today, Caprese is known as Caprese Michelangelo). For several generations, his family had been small-scale bankers in Florence, but his father, Lodovico di Leonardo di Buonarroti di Simoni, failed to maintain the bank's financial status, and held occasional government positions. At the time of Michelangelo's birth, his father was the Judicial administrator of the small town of Caprese and local administrator of Chiusi. Michelangelo's mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena. The Buonarrotis claimed to descend from the Countess Mathilde of Canossa; this claim remains unproven, but Michelangelo himself believed it. Several months after Michelangelo's birth, the family returned to Florence, where Michelangelo was raised. At later times, during the prolonged illness and after the death of his mother in 1481 when he was just six years old, Michelangelo lived with a stonecutter and his wife and family in the town of Settignano, where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm. Giorgio Vasari quotes Michelangelo as saying, "If there is some good in me, it is because I was born in the subtle atmosphere of your country of Arezzo. Along with the milk of my nurse I received the knack of handling chisel and hammer, with which I make my figures."

Michelangelo's father sent him to study grammar with the Humanist Francesco da Urbino in Florence as a young boy. The young artist, however, showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of painters. At thirteen, Michelangelo was apprenticed to the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. When Michelangelo was only fourteen, his father persuaded Ghirlandaio to pay his apprentice as an artist, which was highly unusual at the time. When in 1489 Lorenzo de' Medici, de facto ruler of Florence, asked Ghirlandaio for his two best pupils, Ghirlandaio sent Michelangelo and Francesco Granacci. From 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended the Humanist academy which the Medici had founded along Neo Platonic lines. Michelangelo studied sculpture under Bertoldo di Giovanni. At the academy, both Michelangelo's outlook and his art were subject to the influence of many of the most prominent philosophers and writers of the day including Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Poliziano. At this time, Michelangelo sculpted the reliefs ''Madonna of the Steps'' (1490–1492) and ''Battle of the Centaurs'' (1491–1492). The latter was based on a theme suggested by Poliziano and was commissioned by Lorenzo de Medici. While both were apprenticed to Bertoldo di Giovanni, Pietro Torrigiano struck the 17-year-old on the nose, and thus caused that disfigurement which is so conspicuous in all the portraits of Michelangelo.

Early adulthood

Lorenzo de' Medici's death on 8 April 1492 brought a reversal of Michelangelo's circumstances. Michelangelo left the security of the Medici court and returned to his father's house. In the following months he carved a ''wooden crucifix'' (1493), as a gift to the prior of the Florentine church of Santo Spirito, who had permitted him some studies of anatomy on the corpses of the church's hospital. Between 1493 and 1494 he bought a block of marble for a larger than life statue of Hercules, which was sent to France and subsequently disappeared sometime circa 18th century. On 20 January 1494, after heavy snowfalls, Lorenzo's heir, Piero de Medici commissioned a snow statue, and Michelangelo again entered the court of the Medici.

In the same year, the Medici were expelled from Florence as the result of the rise of Savonarola. Michelangelo left the city before the end of the political upheaval, moving to Venice and then to Bologna. In Bologna, he was commissioned to finish the carving of the last small figures of the Shrine of St. Dominic, in the church dedicated to that saint. Towards the end of 1494, the political situation in Florence was calmer. The city, previously under threat from the French, was no longer in danger as Charles VIII had suffered defeats. Michelangelo returned to Florence but received no commissions from the new city government under Savonarola. He returned to the employment of the Medici. During the half year he spent in Florence he worked on two small statues, a child ''St. John the Baptist'' and a sleeping ''Cupid''. According to Condivi, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, for whom Michelangelo had sculpted ''St. John the Baptist'', asked that Michelangelo "fix it so that it looked as if it had been buried" so he could "send it to Rome...pass [it off as] an ancient work and...sell it much better." Both Lorenzo and Michelangelo were unwittingly cheated out of the real value of the piece by a middleman. Cardinal Raffaele Riario, to whom Lorenzo had sold it, discovered that it was a fraud, but was so impressed by the quality of the sculpture that he invited the artist to Rome. This apparent success in selling his sculpture abroad as well as the conservative Florentine situation may have encouraged Michelangelo to accept the prelate's invitation.

Rome

Michelangelo arrived in Rome 25 June 1496 at the age of 21. On 4 July of the same year, he began work on a commission for Cardinal Raffaele Riario, an over-life-size statue of the Roman wine god, ''Bacchus''. However, upon completion, the work was rejected by the cardinal, and subsequently entered the collection of the banker Jacopo Galli, for his garden.

In November of 1497, the French ambassador in the Holy See commissioned one of his most famous works, the ''Pietà'' and the contract was agreed upon in August of the following year. The contemporary opinion about this work – "a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture" – was summarized by Vasari: "It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh."

In Rome, Michelangelo lived near the church of Santa Maria di Loreto. Here, according to the legend, he fell in love with Vittoria Colonna, marchioness of Pescara and a poet. His house was demolished in 1874, and the remaining architectural elements saved by the new proprietors were destroyed in 1930. Today a modern reconstruction of Michelangelo's house can be seen on the Janiculum hill. It is also during this period that skeptics allege Michelangelo executed the sculpture Laocoön and His Sons which resides in the Vatican.

Statue of David

Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1499–1501. Things were changing in the republic after the fall of anti-Renaissance Priest and leader of Florence, Girolamo Savonarola (executed in 1498) and the rise of the ''gonfaloniere'' Piero Soderini. He was asked by the consuls of the Guild of Wool to complete an unfinished project begun 40 years earlier by Agostino di Duccio: a colossal statue portraying David as a symbol of Florentine freedom, to be placed in the Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. Michelangelo responded by completing his most famous work, the Statue of David in 1504. This masterwork, created out of a marble block from the quarries at Carrara that had already been worked on by an earlier hand, definitively established his prominence as a sculptor of extraordinary technical skill and strength of symbolic imagination.

Also during this period, Michelangelo painted the ''Holy Family and St John'', also known as the ''Doni Tondo'' or the ''Holy Family of the Tribune'': it was commissioned for the marriage of Angelo Doni and Maddalena Strozzi and in the 17th century hung in the room known as the Tribune in the Uffizi. He also may have painted the Madonna and Child with John the Baptist, known as the ''Manchester Madonna'' and now in the National Gallery, London.

Sistine Chapel ceiling

In 1505 Michelangelo was invited back to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II. He was commissioned to build the Pope's tomb. Under the patronage of the Pope, Michelangelo had to constantly stop work on the tomb in order to accomplish numerous other tasks. Because of these interruptions, Michelangelo worked on the tomb for 40 years. The tomb, of which the central feature is Michelangelo's statue of Moses, was never finished to Michelangelo's satisfaction. It is located in the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli in Rome.

During the same period, Michelangelo took the commission to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which took approximately four years to complete (1508–1512). According to Michelangelo's account, Bramante and Raphael convinced the Pope to commission Michelangelo in a medium not familiar to the artist. This was done in order that he, Michelangelo, would suffer unfavorable comparisons with his rival Raphael, who at the time was at the peak of his own artistry as the primo fresco painter. However, this story is discounted by modern historians on the grounds of contemporary evidence, and may merely have been a reflection of the artist's own perspective.

Michelangelo was originally commissioned to paint the 12 Apostles against a starry sky, but lobbied for a different and more complex scheme, representing creation, the Downfall of Man and the Promise of Salvation through the prophets and Genealogy of Christ. The work is part of a larger scheme of decoration within the chapel which represents much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

The composition eventually contained over 300 figures and had at its center nine episodes from the Book of Genesis, divided into three groups: God's Creation of the Earth; God's Creation of Humankind and their fall from God's grace; and lastly, the state of Humanity as represented by Noah and his family. On the pendentives supporting the ceiling are painted twelve men and women who prophesied the coming of the Jesus. They are seven prophets of Israel and five Sibyls, prophetic women of the Classical world.

Among the most famous paintings on the ceiling are The Creation of Adam, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Great Flood, the Prophet Isaiah and the Cumaean Sibyl. Around the windows are painted the ancestors of Christ.

Under Medici popes in Florence

In 1513 Pope Julius II died and his successor Pope Leo X, of the Medici family, commissioned Michelangelo to reconstruct the façade of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence and to adorn it with sculptures. Michelangelo agreed reluctantly. The three years Michelangelo spent in creating drawings and models for the façade, as well as attempting to open a new marble quarry at Pietrasanta specifically for the project, were among the most frustrating in his career, as work was abruptly canceled by his financially strapped patrons before any real progress had been made. The basilica lacks a façade to this day.

Apparently not the least embarrassed by this turnabout, the Medici later came back to Michelangelo with another grand proposal, this time for a family funerary chapel in the Basilica of San Lorenzo. Fortunately for posterity, this project, occupying the artist for much of the 1520s and 1530s, was more fully realized. In 1527, the Florentine citizens, encouraged by the sack of Rome, threw out the Medici and restored the republic. A siege of the city ensued, and Michelangelo went to the aid of his beloved Florence by working on the city's fortifications from 1528 to 1529. The city fell in 1530 and the Medici were restored to power. Completely out of sympathy with the repressive reign of the ducal Medici, Michelangelo left Florence for good in the mid-1530s, leaving assistants to complete the Medici chapel.

Last works in Rome

The fresco of ''The Last Judgment'' on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel was commissioned by Pope Clement VII, who died shortly after assigning the commission. Paul III was instrumental in seeing that Michelangelo began and completed the project. Michelangelo labored on the project from 1534 to October 1541. The work is massive and spans the entire wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel. ''The Last Judgment'' is a depiction of the second coming of Christ and the apocalypse; where the souls of humanity rise and are assigned to their various fates, as judged by Christ, surrounded by the Saints. In that work, the position of the figure of Christ appears to pay tribute to that of Melozzo's Christ in the ''Ascension of our Lord'', once in the Santi Apostoli, now in the Quirinal Palace.

Once completed, the depiction of Christ and the Virgin Mary naked was considered sacrilegious, and Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor Sernini (Mantua's ambassador) campaigned to have the fresco removed or censored, but the Pope resisted. After Michelangelo's death, it was decided to obscure the genitals (''"Pictura in Cappella Ap.ca coopriantur"''). So Daniele da Volterra, an apprentice of Michelangelo, was commissioned to cover with perizomas (briefs) the genitals, leaving unaltered the complex of bodies. When the work was restored in 1993, the conservators chose not to remove all the perizomas of Daniele, leaving some of them as a historical document, and because some of Michelangelo’s work was previously scraped away by the touch-up artist's application of “decency” to the masterpiece. A faithful uncensored copy of the original, by Marcello Venusti, can be seen at the Capodimonte Museum of Naples. Censorship always followed Michelangelo, once described as "inventor delle porcherie" ("inventor of obscenities", in the original Italian language referring to "pork things"). The infamous "fig-leaf campaign" of the Counter-Reformation, aiming to cover all representations of human genitals in paintings and sculptures, started with Michelangelo's works. To give two examples, the marble statue of ''Cristo della Minerva'' (church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome) was covered by added drapery, as it remains today, and the statue of the naked child Jesus in ''Madonna of Bruges'' (The Church of Our Lady in Bruges, Belgium) remained covered for several decades. Also, the plaster copy of the David in the Cast Courts (Victoria and Albert Museum) in London, has a fig leaf in a box at the back of the statue. It was there to be placed over the statue's genitals so that they would not upset visiting female royalty.

In 1546, Michelangelo was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, and designed its dome. As St. Peter's was progressing there was concern that Michelangelo would pass away before the dome was finished. However, once building commenced on the lower part of the dome, the supporting ring, the completion of the design was inevitable. Michelangelo died in Rome at the age of 88 (three weeks before his 89th birthday). His body was brought back from Rome for interment at the Basilica of Santa Croce, fulfilling the maestro's last request to be buried in his beloved Tuscany.

Last sketch found

On 7 December 2007, Michelangelo's red chalk sketch for the dome of St Peter's Basilica, his last before his death in 1564, was discovered in the Vatican archives. It is extremely rare, since he destroyed his designs later in life. The sketch is a partial plan for one of the radial columns of the cupola drum of Saint Peter's.

Disputed works

A number of works attributed to Michelangelo are disputed. These include the Palestrina Pietà and the paintings, The ''Manchester Madonna'' and ''The Torment of Saint Anthony'', newly acquired by the Kimbell Art Museum, USA (previously attributed to "Workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio", and having had two previously unsuccessful attempts at attribution to the hand of Michelangelo). In addition, the ''Cupid'' sculpture "rediscovered" in the French Embassy in New York in 1996 (now on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art) has also been inconclusively attributed to Michelangelo.

Architectural work

Michelangelo worked on many projects that had been started by other men, most notably in his work at St Peter's Basilica, Rome. The Campidoglio, designed by Michelangelo during the same period, rationalized the structures and spaces of Rome's Capitoline Hill. Its shape, more a rhomboid than a square, was intended to counteract the effects of perspective. The major Florentine architectural projects by Michelangelo are the unexecuted façade for the Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence and the Medici Chapel (''Capella Medicea'') and Laurentian Library there, and the fortifications of Florence. The major Roman projects are St. Peter's, Palazzo Farnese, San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Sforza Chapel (''Capella Sforza'') in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, Porta Pia and Santa Maria degli Angeli.

Laurentian Library

Around 1530 Michelangelo designed the Laurentian Library in Florence, attached to the church of San Lorenzo. He produced new styles such as pilasters tapering thinner at the bottom, and a staircase with contrasting rectangular and curving forms.

Medici Chapel

Michelangelo designed the Medici Chapel and in fact used his own discretion to create its composition. The Medici Chapel has monuments in it dedicated to certain members of the Medici family. Michelangelo never finished the project, so his pupils later completed it. Lorenzo the Magnificent was buried at the entrance wall of the Medici Chapel. Sculptures of the "Madonna and Child" and the Medici patron saints Cosmas and Damian were set over his burial. The "Madonna and child" was Michelangelo's own work. The concealed corridor with wall drawings of Michelangelo under the New Sacristy discovered in 1976.

Personal life

In his personal life, Michelangelo was abstemious. He told his apprentice, Ascanio Condivi: "However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man." Condivi said he was indifferent to food and drink, eating "more out of necessity than of pleasure" and that he "often slept in his clothes and ... boots." These habits may have made him unpopular. His biographer Paolo Giovio says, "His nature was so rough and uncouth that his domestic habits were incredibly squalid, and deprived posterity of any pupils who might have followed him." He may not have minded, since he was by nature a solitary and melancholy person. He had a reputation for being ''bizzarro e fantastico'' because he "withdrew himself from the company of men."

Sexuality

While clearly having a keen appreciation for the nude form resurgent in the Renaissance, fundamental to Michelangelo's art is his love of male beauty which seems to have particularly attracted him both aesthetically and emotionally. In part, this was an expression of the Renaissance idealization of masculinity. But in Michelangelo's art there is clearly a sensual response to this aesthetic.

The sculptor's expressions of love have been characterized as both Neoplatonic and openly homoerotic, Recent scholarship seeks an interpretation which respects both readings, yet is wary of drawing absolute conclusions. One example of the conundrum is Cecchino dei Bracci, whose death, only a year after their meeting in 1543, inspired the writing of forty eight funeral epigrams, which by some accounts allude to a relationship that was not only romantic but physical as well: :{| | style="width:160px;"|La carne terra, e qui l'ossa mia, prive de' lor begli occhi, e del leggiadro aspetto fan fede a quel ch'i' fu grazia nel letto, che abbracciava, e' n che l'anima vive. |The flesh now earth, and here my bones, Bereft of handsome eyes, and jaunty air, Still loyal are to him I joyed in bed, Whom I embraced, in whom my soul now lives. |} According to others, they represent an emotionless and elegant re-imagining of Platonic dialogue, whereby erotic poetry was seen as an expression of refined sensibilities (Indeed, it must be remembered that professions of love in 16th century Italy were given a far wider application than now). Some young men were street wise and took advantage of the sculptor. Febo di Poggio, in 1532, peddled his charms—in answer to Michelangelo's love poem he asks for money. Earlier, Gherardo Perini, in 1522, had stolen from him shamelessly. Michelangelo defended his privacy above all. When an employee of his friend Niccolò Quaratesi offered his son as apprentice suggesting that he would be good even in bed, Michelangelo refused indignantly, suggesting Quaratesi fire the man.

The greatest written expression of his love was given to Tommaso dei Cavalieri (c. 1509–1587), who was 23 years old when Michelangelo met him in 1532, at the age of 57. Cavalieri was open to the older man's affection: ''I swear to return your love. Never have I loved a man more than I love you, never have I wished for a friendship more than I wish for yours.'' Cavalieri remained devoted to Michelangelo until his death.

Michelangelo dedicated to him over three hundred sonnets and madrigals, constituting the largest sequence of poems that he composed. Some modern commentators assert that the relationship was merely a Platonic affection, even suggesting that Michelangelo was seeking a surrogate son. However, their homoerotic nature was recognized in his own time, so that a decorous veil was drawn across them by his grand nephew, Michelangelo the Younger, who published an edition of the poetry in 1623 with the gender of pronouns changed. John Addington Symonds, the early British homosexual activist, undid this change by translating the original sonnets into English and writing a two-volume biography, published in 1893.

The sonnets are the first large sequence of poems in any modern tongue addressed by one man to another, predating Shakespeare's sonnets to the fair youth by fifty years. {| |- | :I feel as lit by fire a cold countenance :That burns me from afar and keeps itself ice-chill; :A strength I feel two shapely arms to fill :Which without motion moves every balance. ::— (Michael Sullivan, translation) |}

Late in life he nurtured a great love for the poet and noble widow Vittoria Colonna, whom he met in Rome in 1536 or 1538 and who was in her late forties at the time. They wrote sonnets for each other and were in regular contact until she died.

It is impossible to know for certain whether Michelangelo had physical relationships (Condivi ascribed to him a "monk-like chastity"), but through his poetry and visual art we may at least glimpse the arc of his imagination.

See also

Michelangelo and the Medici

Michelangelo phenomenon

Renaissance art

Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes

The asteroid 3001 Michelangelo and a crater on the planet Mercury were named after Michelangelo.

The 1965 feature film ''The Agony and the Ecstasy'' features the story of Michelangelo and his travails in painting the Sistine Chapel. He is portrayed in the film by Charlton Heston.

Portraits of Michelangelo

Footnotes

:a. Michelangelo's father marks the date as 6 March 1474 in the Florentine manner ''ab Incarnatione''. However, in the Roman manner, ''ab Nativitate'', it is 1475. :b. Sources disagree as to how old Michelangelo was when he departed for school. De Tolnay writes that it was at ten years old while Sedgwick notes in her translation of Condivi that Michelangelo was seven. :c. The Strozzi family acquired the sculpture ''Hercules''. Filippo Strozzi sold it to Francis I in 1529. In 1594, Henry IV installed it in the Jardin d'Estang at Fontainebleau where it disappeared in 1713 when the Jardin d'Estange was destroyed. :d. Vasari makes no mention of this episode and Paolo Giovio's ''Life of Michelangelo'' indicates that Michelangelo tried to pass the statue off as an antique himself.

References

Further reading

Einem, Herbert von (1973). ''Michelangelo''. Trans. Ronald Taylor. London: Methuen.

Gilbert, Creighton (1994). ''Michelangelo On and Off the Sistine Ceiling''. New York: George Braziller.

Hibbard, Howard (1974). ''Michelangelo''. New York: Harper & Row.

Hirst, Michael and Jill Dunkerton. (1994) ''The Young Michelangelo: The Artist in Rome 1496–1501''. London: National Gallery Publications.

Pietrangeli, Carlo, et al. (1994). ''The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration''. New York: Harry N. Abrams

Saslow, James M. (1991). ''The Poetry of Michelangelo: An Annotated Translation''. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Seymour, Charles, Jr. (1972). ''Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel Ceiling''. New York: W. W. Norton.

Summers, David (1981). ''Michelangelo and the Language of Art''. Princeton University Press.

Tolnay, Charles de. (1964). ''The Art and Thought of Michelangelo''. 5 vols. New York: Pantheon Books.

Wilde, Johannes (1978). ''Michelangelo: Six Lectures''. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

External links

Where to find Michelangelo's works in Florence

"The Divine Michelangelo – Timeline of Michelangelo's Life and Major Works"

Michelangelo in the "A World History of Art"

Michelangelo in the "Vatican Secret Archives" A letter by Michelangelo

Photographs of details at the Campidoglio

The Digital Michelangelo Project

The BP Special Exhibition Michelangelo Drawings – closer to the master

Michelangelo's Drawings: Real or Fake? How to decide if a drawing is by Michelangelo.

Models he used to make his sculptures and paintings

, suggesting Michelangelo's coded use of his knowledge of anatomy.

"Michelangelo: The Man and the Myth"

Category:1475 births Category:1564 deaths Category:Architects of Roman Catholic churches Category:Artist authors Category:Figurative artists Category:Italian architects Category:Italian ecclesiastical architects Category:Italian painters Category:Italian Roman Catholics Category:Italian sculptors Category:People celebrated in the Lutheran liturgical calendar Category:People from the Province of Arezzo Category:Renaissance artists Michelangelo Buonarroti Category:Roman Catholic Church painters Category:Roman Catholic Church sculptors Category:Tuscan painters

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birth date	November 17, 1942
birth place	Flushing, Queens, NY, U.S.
nationality	American
influences	''in alphabetical order'': Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, Satyajit Ray
years active	1963–present
birth name	Martin Charles Scorsese
occupation	Film director, producer, actor, screenwriter
education	Cardinal Hayes High School
alma mater	New York University / Tisch
spouse	Laraine Marie Brennan (1965–ca 71; divorced)Julia Cameron (1976–77; divorced)Isabella Rossellini (1979–82; divorced)Barbara De Fina (1985–91; divorced)Helen Morris (1999–present)
parents	Charles Scorsese,Catherine Scorsese }}

Martin Charles Scorsese (; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation. He is a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and DGA Awards.

Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, machismo, modern crime and violence. Scorsese is hailed as one of the most significant and influential American filmmakers of all time, directing landmark films such as ''Mean Streets'', ''Taxi Driver'', ''Raging Bull'', and ''Goodfellas'' – all of which he collaborated on with actor and close friend Robert De Niro. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for ''The Departed'', having been nominated a previous five times.

Martin Scorsese grew up in New York City. His father, Charles Scorsese (1913–1993), and mother, Catherine Scorsese (born Cappa; 1912–97), both worked in New York's Garment District. His father was a clothes presser and an actor, and his mother was a seamstress and an actress. His father's parents emigrated from Polizzi Generosa, in the province of Palermo, Sicily, and his mother was also of Italian descent. Scorsese was raised in a devoutly Catholic environment. As a boy, he had asthma and couldn't play sports or do any activities with other kids and so his parents and his older brother would often take him to movie theaters; it was at this stage in his life that he developed passion for cinema. Enamored of historical epics in his adolescence, at least two films of the genre, ''Land of the Pharaohs'' and ''El Cid'', appear to have had a deep and lasting impact on his cinematic psyche. Scorsese also developed an admiration for neorealist cinema at this time. He recounted its influence in a documentary on Italian neorealism, and commented on how ''Bicycle Thieves'' alongside ''Paisà'', ''Rome, Open City'' inspired him and how this influenced his view or portrayal of his Sicilian genes. In his documentary, ''Il Mio Viaggio in Italia'', Scorsese noted that the Sicilian episode of Roberto Rossellini's ''Paisà'' which he first saw on television alongside his relatives, who were themselves Sicilian immigrants, made a significant impact on his life. He acknowledges owing a great debt to the French New Wave and has stated that "the French New Wave has influenced all filmmakers who have worked since, whether they saw the films or not." He has also cited filmmakers like Satyajit Ray, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini as a major influence on his career. His initial desire to become a priest while attending Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx gave way to cinema, and, consequently, Scorsese enrolled in NYU's University College of Arts and Science, (now known as the College of Arts and Science), where he earned a B.A. in English in 1964. He went on to earn his M.F.A. from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 1966, a year after the school was founded.

Family

Scorsese has been married five times. His first wife was Laraine Marie Brennan; they have a daughter, Catherine. He married the writer Julia Cameron in 1976; they have a daughter, Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, who is an actress and appeared in ''The Age of Innocence'', but the marriage lasted only a year. The divorce was acrimonious and served as the basis of Cameron's first feature, the dark comedy, ''God's Will'', which also starred their daughter, Domenica. Their daughter also had a small role in ''Cape Fear'' using the name Domenica Scorsese and has continued to act, write, direct and produce.

He was married to actress Isabella Rossellini from 1979 to their divorce in 1983. He then married producer Barbara De Fina in 1985; their marriage ended in divorce as well, in 1991. He has been married to Helen Morris since 1999; they have a daughter, Francesca, who appeared in ''The Departed'' and ''The Aviator''. He is primarily based in New York City.

Scorsese has commented, "I'm a lapsed Catholic. But I am Roman Catholic, there's no way out of it."

Career

Early career

Scorsese attended New York University's film school (B.A., English, 1964; M.F.A., film, 1966) making the short films ''What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?'' (1963) and ''It's Not Just You, Murray!'' (1964). His most famous short of the period is the darkly comic ''The Big Shave'' (1967), which features Peter Bernuth. The film is an indictment of America's involvement in Vietnam, suggested by its alternative title ''Viet '67''. Scorsese has mentioned on several occasions that he was greatly inspired in his early days at New York University by his Armenian-American film professor Haig P. Manoogian.

In 1967, Scorsese made his first feature-length film, the black and white ''I Call First'', which was later retitled ''Who's That Knocking at My Door'' with his fellow students actor Harvey Keitel and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, both of whom were to become long-term collaborators. This film was intended to be the first of Scorsese's semi-autobiographical 'J.R. Trilogy', which also would have included his later film, ''Mean Streets''.

1970s

From there he became friends with the influential "movie brats" of the 1970s: Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg. It was Brian De Palma who introduced Scorsese to Robert De Niro. During this period he worked as the assistant director and one of the editors on the documentary ''Woodstock'' and met actor-director John Cassavetes, who would also go on to become a close friend and mentor.

''Mean Streets''

In 1972 Scorsese made the Depression-era exploiter ''Boxcar Bertha'' for B-movie producer Roger Corman, who had also helped directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, and John Sayles launch their careers. It was Corman who taught Scorsese that entertaining films could be shot with next to no money or time, preparing the young director well for the challenges to come with ''Mean Streets''. Following the film's release, Cassavetes encouraged Scorsese to make the films that he wanted to make, rather than someone else's projects.

Championed by influential movie critic Pauline Kael, ''Mean Streets'' was a breakthrough for Scorsese, De Niro, and Keitel. By now the signature Scorsese style was in place: macho posturing, bloody violence, Catholic guilt and redemption, gritty New York locale (though the majority of ''Mean Streets'' was actually shot in Los Angeles), rapid-fire editing, and a rock soundtrack. Although the film was innovative, its wired atmosphere, edgy documentary style, and gritty street-level direction owed a debt to directors Cassavetes, Samuel Fuller, and early Jean-Luc Godard. (Indeed the film was completed with much encouragement from Cassavetes, who felt ''Boxcar Bertha'' was undeserving of the young director's prodigious talent.)

In 1974, actress Ellen Burstyn chose Scorsese to direct her in ''Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore'', for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress. Although well regarded, the film remains an anomaly in the director's early career, as it focuses on a central female character. Returning to Little Italy to explore his ethnic roots, Scorsese next came up with Italianamerican, a documentary featuring his parents, Charles and Catherine Scorsese.

''Taxi Driver''

''Taxi Driver'' followed in 1976 – Scorsese's dark, urban nightmare of one lonely man's slow, deliberate descent into insanity.

The film established Scorsese as an accomplished filmmaker and also brought attention to cinematographer Michael Chapman, whose style tends towards high contrasts, strong colors and complex camera movements. The film starred Robert De Niro as the troubled and psychotic Travis Bickle. The film co-starred Jodie Foster in a highly controversial role as an underage prostitute, and Harvey Keitel as her pimp, Matthew, called "Sport."

''Taxi Driver'' also marked the start of a series of collaborations between Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader, whose influences included the diary of would-be assassin Arthur Bremer and ''Pickpocket'', a film by the French director Robert Bresson. Writer/director Schrader often returns to Bresson's work in films such as ''American Gigolo'', ''Light Sleeper'', and Scorsese's later ''Bringing Out the Dead''.

Already controversial upon its release, ''Taxi Driver'' hit the headlines again five years later, when John Hinckley, Jr. made an assassination attempt on then-President Ronald Reagan. He subsequently blamed his act on his obsession with Jodie Foster's ''Taxi Driver'' character (in the film, De Niro's character, Travis Bickle, makes an assassination attempt on a senator).

''Taxi Driver'' won the Palme d'Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, also receiving four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, although all were unsuccessful.

Scorsese was subsequently offered the role of Charles Manson in the movie ''Helter Skelter'' and a part in Sam Fuller's war movie ''The Big Red One'', but he turned both down. However he did accept the role of a gangster in exploitation movie ''Cannonball'' directed by Paul Bartel. In this period there were also several directorial projects that never got off the ground including ''Haunted Summer'', about Mary Shelley and a film with Marlon Brando about the Indian massacre at Wounded Knee.

''New York, New York'' and ''The Last Waltz''

The critical success of ''Taxi Driver'' encouraged Scorsese to move ahead with his first big-budget project: the highly stylized musical ''New York, New York''. This tribute to Scorsese's home town and the classic Hollywood musical was a box-office failure.

''New York, New York'' was the director's third collaboration with Robert De Niro, co-starring with Liza Minnelli (a tribute and allusion to her father, legendary musical director Vincente Minnelli). The film is best remembered today for the title theme song, which was popularized by Frank Sinatra. Although possessing Scorsese's usual visual panache and stylistic bravura, many critics felt its enclosed studio-bound atmosphere left it leaden in comparison to his earlier work.

Despite its weak reception, the film is regarded by some to be among the director's finest achievements. Richard Brody in the ''New Yorker'' wrote: "For Scorsese, a lifelong cinephile, the essence of New York could be found in its depiction in classic Hollywood movies. Remarkably, his backward-looking tribute to the golden age of musicals and noirish romantic melodramas turned out to be one of his most freewheeling and personal films." Jean-Luc Godard is another admirer of the film.

The disappointing reception that ''New York, New York'' received drove Scorsese into depression. By this stage the director had also developed a serious cocaine addiction. However, he did find the creative drive to make the highly regarded ''The Last Waltz'', documenting the final concert by The Band. It was held at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, and featured one of the most extensive lineups of prominent guest performers at a single concert, including Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Neil Diamond, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Paul Butterfield, Ronnie Wood and Van Morrison. However, Scorsese's commitments to other projects delayed the release of the film until 1978.

Another Scorsese-directed documentary entitled ''American Boy'' also appeared in 1978, focusing on Steven Prince, the cocky gun salesman who appeared in ''Taxi Driver''. A period of wild partying followed, damaging the director's already fragile health.

Scorsese also helped provide footage for the documentary ''Elvis on Tour''.

1980s

''Raging Bull''

By several accounts (Scorsese's included), Robert De Niro practically saved Scorsese's life when he persuaded Scorsese to kick his cocaine addiction to make his highly regarded film, ''Raging Bull''. Convinced that he would never make another movie, he poured his energies into making this violent biopic of middleweight boxing champion Jake LaMotta, calling it a Kamikaze method of film-making. The film is widely viewed as a masterpiece and was voted the greatest film of the 1980s by Britain's ''Sight & Sound'' magazine. It received eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Robert De Niro, and Scorsese's first for Best Director. De Niro won, as did Thelma Schoonmaker for editing, but Best Director went to Robert Redford for ''Ordinary People''.

''Raging Bull'', filmed in high contrast black and white, is where Scorsese's style reached its zenith: ''Taxi Driver'' and ''New York, New York'' had used elements of expressionism to replicate psychological points of view, but here the style was taken to new extremes, employing extensive slow-motion, complex tracking shots, and extravagant distortion of perspective (for example, the size of boxing rings would change from fight to fight). Thematically too, the concerns carried on from ''Mean Streets'' and ''Taxi Driver'': insecure males, violence, guilt, and redemption.

Although the screenplay for ''Raging Bull'' was credited to Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin (who earlier co-wrote ''Mean Streets''), the finished script differed extensively from Schrader's original draft. It was re-written several times by various writers including Jay Cocks (who went on to co-script later Scorsese films ''The Age of Innocence'' and ''Gangs of New York''). The final draft was largely written by Scorsese and Robert De Niro.

The American Film Institute chose ''Raging Bull'' as the #1 American sports film on their list of the top 10 sports films.

''The King of Comedy''

Scorsese's next project was his fifth collaboration with Robert De Niro, ''The King of Comedy'' (1983). A satire on the world of media and celebrity, it was an obvious departure from the more emotionally committed films he had become associated with. Visually, it was far less kinetic than the style Scorsese had developed up until this point, often using a static camera and long takes. The expressionism of his recent work here gave way to moments of almost total surrealism. It still bore many of Scorsese's trademarks, however, such as its focus on a troubled loner who ironically becomes famous through a criminal act (murder and kidnapping, respectively).

''The King of Comedy'' failed at the box office, but has become increasingly well regarded by critics in the years since its release. German director Wim Wenders numbered it among his fifteen favourite films. Also, Scorsese apparently believes that this is the best performance De Niro ever gave for him.

Next Scorsese made a brief cameo appearance in the movie ''Anna Pavlova'' (also known as ''A Woman for All Time''), originally intended to be directed by one of his heroes, Michael Powell. This led to a more significant role in Bertrand Tavernier's jazz movie ''Round Midnight''.

In 1983 Scorsese began work on a long-cherished personal project, ''The Last Temptation of Christ'', based on the 1951 (English translation 1960) novel written by Nikos Kazantzakis, who was introduced to the director by actress Barbara Hershey when they were both attending New York University in the late 1960s. The movie was slated to shoot under the Paramount Pictures banner, but shortly before principal photography was to commence, Paramount pulled the plug on the project, citing pressure from religious groups. In this aborted 1983 version, Aidan Quinn was cast as Jesus, and Sting was cast as Pontius Pilate. (In the 1988 version, these roles were played respectively by Willem Dafoe and David Bowie.)

''After Hours''

After the collapse of this project Scorsese again saw his career at a critical point, as he described in the documentary ''Filming for Your Life: Making 'After Hours''' (2004). He saw that in the increasingly commercial world of 1980s Hollywood, the highly stylized and personal 1970s films he and others had built their careers on would not continue to enjoy the same status. Scorsese decided then on an almost totally new approach to his work. With ''After Hours'' (1985) he made an aesthetic shift back to a pared-down, almost "underground" film-making style – his way of staying viable. Filmed on an extremely low budget, on location, and at night in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, the film is a black comedy about one increasingly misfortunate night for a mild New York word processor (Griffin Dunne) and featured cameos by such disparate actors as Teri Garr and Cheech and Chong. A bit of a stylistic anomaly for Scorsese, ''After Hours'' fits in well with popular low-budget "cult" films of the 1980s, e.g. Jonathan Demme's ''Something Wild'' and Alex Cox's ''Repo Man''.

''The Color of Money''

Along with the 1987 Michael Jackson music video "Bad", in 1986 Scorsese made ''The Color of Money'', a sequel to the much admired Robert Rossen film ''The Hustler'' (1961) with Paul Newman. Although typically visually assured, ''The Color of Money'' was the director's first foray into mainstream commercial film-making. It won actor Paul Newman a belated Oscar and gave Scorsese the clout to finally secure backing for a project that had been a long time goal for him: ''The Last Temptation of Christ''. He also made a brief venture into television, directing an episode of Steven Spielberg's ''Amazing Stories''.

''The Last Temptation of Christ''

After his mid-80s flirtation with commercial Hollywood, Scorsese made a major return to personal film-making with the Paul Schrader-scripted ''The Last Temptation of Christ'' in 1988. Based on Nikos Kazantzakis's controversial 1960 book, it retold the life of Christ in human rather than divine terms. Even prior to its release the film caused a massive furore, worldwide protests against its blasphemy effectively turning a low budget independent movie into a media sensation. Most controversy centered on the final passages of the film which depicted Christ marrying and raising a family with Mary Magdalene in a Satan-induced hallucination while on the cross.

Looking past the controversy, ''The Last Temptation of Christ'' gained critical acclaim and remains an important work in Scorsese's canon: an explicit attempt to wrestle with the spirituality which had under-pinned his films up until that point. The director went on to receive his second nomination for a Best Director Academy Award (again unsuccessfully, this time losing to Barry Levinson for ''Rain Man'').

Along with directors Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola, in 1989 Scorsese provided one of three segments in the portmanteau film ''New York Stories'', called "Life Lessons".

1990s

''Goodfellas''

After a decade of mostly mixed results, Gangster epic ''Goodfellas'' (1990) was a return to form for Scorsese and his most confident and fully realized film since ''Raging Bull''. De Niro and Joe Pesci in ''Goodfellas'' offered a virtuoso display of the director's bravura cinematic technique and re-established, enhanced, and consolidated his reputation. After the film was released Roger Ebert, a friend and supporter of Scorsese, named ''Goodfellas'' "the best mob movie ever" and is ranked #1 on Roger's movie list for 1990, along with Gene Siskel and Peter Travers, the film is widely considered one of the director's greatest achievements.

However, ''Goodfellas'' also signified an important shift in tone in the director's work, inaugurating an era in his career which was technically accomplished but some have argued emotionally detached. Despite this, many view ''Goodfellas'' as a Scorsese archetype – the apogee of his cinematic technique.

The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, Scorsese earned his third Best Director nomination for ''Goodfellas'' but again lost to a first-time director, Kevin Costner (''Dances With Wolves''). Joe Pesci earned the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in ''Goodfellas''. Scorsese and the film won over a numerous of different awards, including five BAFTA Awards, a Silver Lion and more.

After the film, ''Goodfellas'' was acknowledged as the second best in the gangster film genre (after ''The Godfather''). The American Film Institute put ''Goodfellas'' at #94 on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list and on the 2007 updated version they moved ''Goodfellas'' up to #92 on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list (10th Anniversary Edition) and they put ''Goodfellas'' at #2 on their list of the top 10 Gangster films.

In 1990, he acted in a cameo role as Vincent van Gogh in the film ''Dreams'' by legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.

''Cape Fear''

1991 brought ''Cape Fear'', a remake of a cult 1962 movie of the same name, and the director's seventh collaboration with De Niro. Another foray into the mainstream, the film was a stylized thriller taking its cues heavily from Alfred Hitchcock and Charles Laughton's ''The Night of the Hunter'' (1955). ''Cape Fear'' received a mixed critical reception and was lambasted in many quarters for its scenes depicting misogynistic violence. However, the lurid subject matter did give Scorsese a chance to experiment with a dazzling array of visual tricks and effects. The film garnered two Oscar nominations. Earning eighty million dollars domestically, it would stand as Scorsese's most commercially successful release until ''The Aviator'' (2004), and then ''The Departed'' (2006). The film also marked the first time Scorsese used wide-screen Panavision with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1.

''The Age of Innocence''

The opulent and handsomely mounted ''The Age of Innocence'' (1993) was on the surface a huge departure for Scorsese, a period adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel about the constrictive high society of late-19th Century New York. It was highly lauded by critics upon original release, but was a box office bomb. As noted in ''Scorsese on Scorsese'' by editor/interviewer Ian Christie, the news that Scorsese wanted to make a film about a 19th Century failed romance raised many eyebrows among the film fraternity all the more when Scorsese made it clear that it was a personal project and not a studio for-hire job.

Scorsese was interested in doing a "romantic piece". His friend, Jay Cocks gave him the Wharton novel in 1980, suggesting that this should be the romantic piece Scorsese should film as Cocks felt it best represented his sensibility. In ''Scorsese on Scorsese'' he noted that:

::''"Although the film deals with New York aristocracy and a period of New York history that has been neglected, and although it deals with code and ritual, and with love that's not unrequited but unconsummated – which pretty much covers all the themes I usually deal with – when I read the book, I didn't say, 'Oh good, all those themes are here.'"''

Scorsese, who was strongly drawn to the characters and the story of Wharton's text, wanted his film to be as rich an emotional experience as the book was to him rather than the traditional academic adaptations of literary works. To this aim, Scorsese sought influence from diverse period films which made an emotional impact on him. In ''Scorsese on Scorsese'', he documents influences from films such as Luchino Visconti's ''Senso'' and his ''Il Gattopardo'' as well as Orson Welles's ''The Magnificent Ambersons'' and also Roberto Rossellini's ''La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV''. Although ''The Age of Innocence'' was ultimately different than these films in terms of narrative, story and thematic concern, the presence of a lost society, of lost values as well as detailed re-creations of social customs and rituals continues the tradition of these films.

Recently, it has started to come back into the public eye, especially in countries such as the UK and France, but still is largely neglected in North America. The film earned five Academy Award nominations (including for Scorsese for Best Adapted Screenplay), winning the Costume Design Oscar. It also made a significant impact on directors such as Chinese auteur Tian Zhuangzhuang, and British filmmaker Terence Davies, both of whom ranked it among their ten favorite films.

This was his first collaboration with the Academy Award winning actor, Daniel Day-Lewis, with whom he would work again in ''Gangs of New York''.

''Casino''

1995's expansive ''Casino'', like ''The Age of Innocence'' before it, focused on a tightly wound male whose well-ordered life is disrupted by the arrival of unpredictable forces. The fact that it was a violent gangster film made it more palatable to fans of the director who perhaps were baffled by the apparent departure of the earlier film. Critically, however, ''Casino'' received mixed notices. In large part this was due to its huge stylistic similarities to his earlier ''Goodfellas'', and its excessive violence that garnered it a reputation as possibly the most violent American gangster film ever made . Indeed many of the tropes and tricks of the earlier film resurfaced more or less intact, most obviously the casting of both Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, Pesci once again being an unbridled psychopath. Sharon Stone was nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for her performance.

During the filming Scorsese played a background part as a gambler at one of the tables. It is quite often rumored that a real game of poker was being held at the time between extras and that a pot of $2000 was at stake.

''A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies''

Scorsese still found time for a four hour documentary in 1995 offering a thorough trek through American cinema. It covered the silent era to 1969, a year after which Scorsese began his feature career, stating "I wouldn't feel right commenting on myself or my contemporaries."

''Kundun''

If ''The Age of Innocence'' alienated and confused some fans, then ''Kundun'' (1997) went several steps further, offering an account of the early life of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, the People's Liberation Army's entering of Tibet, and the Dalai Lama's subsequent exile to India. Not least a departure in subject matter, ''Kundun'' also saw Scorsese employing a fresh narrative and visual approach. Traditional dramatic devices were substituted for a trance-like meditation achieved through an elaborate tableau of colourful visual images.

The film was a source of turmoil for its distributor, Disney, who was planning significant expansion into the Chinese market at the time. Initially defiant in the face of pressure from Chinese officials, Disney has since distanced itself from the project, hurting ''Kundun'''s commercial profile.

In the short term, the sheer eclecticism in evidence enhanced the director's reputation. In the long term however, it generally appears ''Kundun'' has been sidelined in most critical appraisals of the director, mostly noted as a stylistic and thematic detour. ''Kundun'' was the director's second attempt to profile the life of a great religious leader, following ''The Last Temptation of Christ''.

''Bringing Out the Dead''

''Bringing Out the Dead'' (1999) was a return to familiar territory, with the director and writer Paul Schrader constructing a pitch-black comic take on their own earlier ''Taxi Driver''. Like previous Scorsese-Schrader collaborations, its final scenes of spiritual redemption explicitly recalled the films of Robert Bresson. (It's also worth noting that the film's incident-filled nocturnal setting is reminiscent of ''After Hours''.) It received generally positive reviews, although not the universal critical acclaim of some of his other films. It stars Nicolas Cage, Ving Rhames, John Goodman, Tom Sizemore, and Patricia Arquette.

2000s

''Gangs of New York''

In 1999 Scorsese also produced a documentary on Italian filmmakers entitled ''Il Mio Viaggio in Italia'', also known as ''My Voyage to Italy''. The documentary foreshadowed the director's next project, the epic ''Gangs of New York'' (2002), influenced by (amongst many others) major Italian directors such as Luchino Visconti and filmed in its entirety at Rome's famous Cinecittà film studios.

With a production budget said to be in excess of $100 million, ''Gangs of New York'' was Scorsese's biggest and arguably most mainstream venture to date. Like ''The Age of Innocence'', it was set in 19th-century New York, although focusing on the other end of the social scale (and like that film, also starring Daniel Day-Lewis). The film also marked the first collaboration between Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who since then has become a fixture in later Scorsese films.

The production was highly troubled with many rumors referring to the director's conflict with Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein. Despite denials of artistic compromise, ''Gangs of New York'' revealed itself to be the director's most conventional film: standard film tropes which the director had traditionally avoided, such as characters existing purely for exposition purposes and explanatory flashbacks, here surfaced in abundance. The original score composed by regular Scorsese collaborator Elmer Bernstein was rejected at a late stage for a score by Howard Shore and mainstream rock artists U2 and Peter Gabriel. The final cut of the movie ran to 168 minutes, while the director's original cut was over 180 minutes in length. The film still received generally positive reviews with the review tallying website Rotten Tomatoes reporting that 75% of the reviews they tallied for the film were positive and summarizing the critics by saying "Though flawed, the sprawling, messy Gangs of New York is redeemed by impressive production design and Day-Lewis's electrifying performance."

Nonetheless, the themes central to the film were consistent with the director's established concerns: New York, violence as culturally endemic, and sub-cultural divisions down ethnic lines.

Originally filmed for a release in the winter of 2001 (to qualify for Academy Award nominations), Scorsese delayed the final production of the film until after the beginning of 2002; the studio consequently delayed the film for nearly a year until its release in the Oscar season of late 2002.

''Gangs of New York'' earned Scorsese his first Golden Globe for Best Director. In February 2003, ''Gangs of New York'' received ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis, however it did not win in any category.

Scorsese also had uncredited involvement as executive producer with the 2002 film ''Deuces Wild'', written by Paul Kimatian.

''The Blues''

The following year Scorsese completed production of ''The Blues'', an expansive seven part documentary tracing the history of blues music from its African roots to the Mississippi Delta and beyond. Seven film-makers including Wim Wenders, Clint Eastwood, Mike Figgis, and Scorsese himself each contributed a 90 minute film (Scorsese's entry was entitled "Feel Like Going Home").

''The Aviator''

Scorsese's film ''The Aviator'' (2004), was a lavish, large-scale biopic of eccentric aviation pioneer and film mogul Howard Hughes and would reunite Scorsese with actor Leonardo DiCaprio. The film received highly positive reviews. The film also met with widespread box office success and gained Academy recognition.

''The Aviator'' was nominated for six Golden Globe awards, including ''Best Motion Picture – Drama'', ''Best Director'', ''Best Screenplay'', and ''Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama'' for Leonardo DiCaprio. It won three, including ''Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama''. In January 2005, ''The Aviator'' became the most-nominated film of the 77th Academy Awards nominations, nominated in 11 categories including Best Picture. The film also garnered nominations in nearly all of the other major categories, including a fifth Best Director nomination for Scorsese, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Leonardo DiCaprio), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Cate Blanchett), and Alan Alda for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Despite having a leading tally, the film ended up with only five Oscars: Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing and Best Cinematography. Scorsese lost again, this time to director Clint Eastwood for ''Million Dollar Baby'' (which also won Best Picture).

''No Direction Home''

''No Direction Home'' is a documentary film by Martin Scorsese that tells of the life of Bob Dylan, and his impact on American popular music and culture of the 20th century. The film does not cover Dylan's entire career; it focuses on his beginnings, his rise to fame in the 1960s, his then-controversial transformation from an acoustic guitar-based musician and performer to an electric guitar-influenced sound and his "retirement" from touring in 1966 following an infamous motorcycle accident. The film was first presented on television in both the United States (as part of the PBS ''American Masters'' series) and the United Kingdom (as part of the BBC Two ''Arena'' series) on September 26–27, 2005. A DVD version of the film was released that same month. The film won a Peabody award. In addition, Scorsese received an Emmy nomination for it.

''The Departed''

Scorsese returned to the crime genre with the Boston-set thriller ''The Departed'', based on the Hong Kong police drama ''Infernal Affairs''. Along with Matt Damon, Leonardo Di Caprio, ''The Departed'' was Scorsese's first collaboration with Jack Nicholson and Martin Sheen.

''The Departed'' opened to widespread critical acclaim with some proclaiming it as one of the best efforts Scorsese had brought to the screen since 1990's ''Goodfellas'', and still others putting it at the same level as Scorsese's most celebrated classics ''Taxi Driver'' and ''Raging Bull''. With domestic box office receipts surpassing $129,402,536, ''The Departed'' was Scorsese's highest grossing film (not accounting for inflation) until 2010's ''Shutter Island''.

Martin Scorsese's direction of ''The Departed'' earned him his second Golden Globe for Best Director, as well as a Critic's Choice Award, his first Director's Guild of America Award, and the Academy Award for Best Director. While being presented with the award, Scorsese said "Could you double-check the envelope?" It was presented to him by his longtime friends and colleagues Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and George Lucas. ''The Departed'' also received the Academy Award for the Best Motion Picture of 2006, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing by longtime Scorsese editor Thelma Schoonmaker, her third win for a Scorsese film, though many thought Scorsese deserved Academy Awards in his past films as well.

''Shine a Light''

''Shine a Light'' is a concert film of rock and roll band The Rolling Stones' performances at New York City's Beacon Theater on October 29 and November 1, 2006, intercut with brief news and interview footage from throughout the band's career.

The film was initially scheduled for release on September 21, 2007, but Paramount Classics postponed its general release until April 2008. Its world premiere was at the opening of the 58th Berlinale Film Festival on February 7, 2008.

2010s

''Shutter Island''

On October 22, 2007, ''Daily Variety'' reported that Scorsese would reunite with Leonardo DiCaprio on a fourth picture, ''Shutter Island''. Principal photography on the Laeta Kalogridis screenplay, based on the novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane, began in Massachusetts in March 2008.

In December 2007, actors Mark Ruffalo, Max von Sydow, Ben Kingsley, and Michelle Williams joined the cast, marking the first time these four actors have worked with Scorsese. The film was released on February 19, 2010. On May 20, 2010, the film was Scorsese's highest grossing film.

''Boardwalk Empire''

Scorsese directed the series premiere for ''Boardwalk Empire'', an HBO drama series, starring Steve Buscemi and Michael Pitt, and based upon Nelson Johnson's book ''Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times and Corruption of Atlantic City''. Terence Winter, who previously wrote for ''The Sopranos'', created the series. In addition to directing the pilot, Scorsese will also serve as an executive producer on the series.

The series premiered on September 19, 2010 and was renewed for a second season.

''George Harrison: Living in the Material World''

Scorsese directed a three-and-a-half-hour documentary about the life and music of former Beatles member George Harrison, which premiered in the United States on HBO over two parts on October 5 and 6, 2011.

''Hugo''

''Hugo'' is a 3D adventure drama film based on Brian Selznick's novel ''The Invention of Hugo Cabret''. The film stars Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Ray Winstone, Emily Mortimer and Jude Law. The film has been met with critical acclaim and earned Scorsese his third Golden Globe Award for Best Director. The film was also nominated for eleven Academy Awards.

This is Scorsese’s first film shot in 3D and was released in the US on November 23, 2011.

Future films

Scorsese has announced several potential future projects. A documentary feature on Scorsese by artist Melinda Camber Porter was nearly complete when she lost her life to cancer.

After the release of his newest film, ''Hugo'', Scorsese anticipates filming an adaptation of Shusaku Endo's novel ''Silence'', a drama about the voyages of two Portuguese Jesuit priests in Japan during the 17th Century. Scorsese had originally planned ''Silence'' as his next project following ''Shutter Island.'' Scorsese reported that his long-planned Frank Sinatra biopic is coming up, with Phil Alden Robinson writing the screenplay. He is also attached to direct ''The Irishman'', which will star Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino. It has also been announced that Scorsese is attached to direct an adaptation of Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø's novel ''The Snowman''.

Collaborations with Robert De Niro

Scorsese frequently collaborated with Robert De Niro, making a total of eight films with the actor. After being introduced to him in the early 1970s, Scorsese cast De Niro in his 1973 film ''Mean Streets''. Three years later, De Niro starred in ''Taxi Driver'', this time holding the lead role. De Niro re-joined Scorsese for ''New York, New York'' in 1977, but the film was unsuccessful. Nevertheless, their partnership continued into the 1980s, when the pair made ''Raging Bull'', which was highly successful, and ''The King of Comedy''. In the 1990s, De Niro starred in ''Goodfellas'', one of the pair's most praised films, and 1991's ''Cape Fear'', before making ''Casino ''in 1995. The two also voiced major parts in the 2004 film ''Shark Tale''. Scorsese and De Niro plan to re-unite for a film referred to as ''The Irishman'' based on the book ''I Heard You Paint Houses'', although a date for the project is uncertain.

Honors

In 2007, Scorsese was listed among ''Time'' magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World.

In August 2007 Scorsese was named the 2nd greatest director of all time in a poll by ''Total Film'' magazine, in front of Steven Spielberg and behind Alfred Hitchcock.

In 2007, Scorsese was honored by the National Italian American Foundation (N.I.A.F.) at the nonprofit's thirty-second Anniversary Gala. During the ceremony, Scorsese helped launch N.I.A.F.'s Jack Valenti Institute, which provides support to Italian film students in the U.S., in memory of former Foundation Board Member and past president of the Motion Picture Association of America (M.P.A.A.) Jack Valenti. Scorsese received his award from Mary Margaret Valenti, Jack's widow. Certain pieces of Scorsese's film related material and personal papers are contained in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives to which scholars and media experts from around the world may have full access. In 2011 Scorsese received an honorary doctorate from the National Film School in Lodz. At the awards ceremony he said, "I feel like I'm a part of this school and that I attended it", paying tribute to the films of Wajda, Munk, Has, Polanski and Skolimowski.

Director trademarks

Begins his films with segments taken from the middle or end of the story. Examples include ''Raging Bull'' (1980), ''Goodfellas'' (1990), ''Casino'' (1995), and ''The Last Waltz''. Frequent use of slow motion, e.g. ''Mean Streets'' (1973), ''Taxi Driver'' (1976), ''Raging Bull'' (1980), and ''Goodfellas'' (1990) . Also known for using freeze frame, such as the opening credits of ''The King of Comedy'' (1983), and throughout ''Goodfellas'' (1990). His lead characters are often morally ambiguous, prone to violence, and/or want to be accepted in society or a society (The Departed, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas) and are not infrequently sociopaths (Cape Fear, Raging Bull, Casino).

In most of his films the main character often falls in love and has a wife, and often has a turning point between the main character and the wife. e.g. ''Raging Bull'', ''Goodfellas'', and ''Casino''.

His blonde leading ladies are usually seen through the eyes of the protagonist as angelic and ethereal; they wear white in their first scene and are photographed in slow-motion (Cybill Shepherd in ''Taxi Driver''; Cathy Moriarty's white bikini in ''Raging Bull''; Sharon Stone's white minidress in ''Casino''). This may possibly be a nod to director Alfred Hitchcock. Often uses long tracking shots. Example: ''Goodfellas'' (1990) Use of MOS sequences set to popular music or voice over, often involving aggressive camera movement and/or rapid editing.

The supporting actor will often betray the protagonist (Micheal in ''Mean Streets'', Judas Iscariot in ''The Last Temptation of Christ'', Jimmy Conway in ''Goodfellas'', Nicky Santoro in ''Casino'')

Often has a quick cameo in his films (''Mean Streets'', ''Taxi Driver'', ''The King of Comedy'', ''After Hours'', ''The Last Temptation of Christ'' (albeit hidden under a hood), ''Casino'', ''The Age of Innocence'', ''Gangs of New York'', ''Hugo''). Also, often contributes his voice to a film without showing his face on screen. He provides the opening voice-over narration in ''Mean Streets'' and ''The Color of Money''; plays the off-screen dressing room attendant in the final scene of ''Raging Bull''; provides the voice of the unseen ambulance dispatcher in ''Bringing out the Dead''. Frequently uses New York City as the main setting in his films, e.g. ''Gangs of New York'', ''Taxi Driver'', ''The Age of Innocence'', ''The King of Comedy'', ''After Hours'', ''New York, New York'', and ''Mean Streets''.

Sometimes highlights characters in a scene with an iris, an homage to 1920s silent film cinema (as scenes at the time sometimes used this transition). This effect can be seen in ''Casino'' (it is used on Sharon Stone and Joe Pesci), ''Life Lessons'', and ''The Departed'' (on Matt Damon).

Some of his films include references/allusions to Westerns, particularly ''Shane'', ''The Searchers'' and ''The Oklahoma Kid''.

More recently, his films have featured corrupt authority figures, such as policemen in ''The Departed'' and politicians in ''Gangs of New York'' and ''The Aviator''.

Guilt is a prominent theme in many of his films, as is the role of Catholicism in creating and dealing with guilt (''Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Bringing Out the Dead, Mean Streets, Who's That Knocking at My Door, Shutter Island'').

Slow motion flashbulbs and accented camera/flash/shutter sounds.

The song ''Gimme Shelter'' by the Rolling Stones is heard in several of Scorsese's films, including ''Goodfellas'', ''Casino'' and ''The Departed''.

Some of his films are inspired by a true story. Examples: ''Raging Bull'', ''Goodfellas'', and ''Casino''.

Frequent collaborations

Scorsese often casts the same actors in his films, particularly Robert De Niro, who collaborated with Scorsese for eight films. Included are the three films (''Raging Bull'', ''Taxi Driver'', and ''Goodfellas'') that made AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list. Scorsese has often said he thinks De Niro's best work under his direction was Rupert Pupkin in ''The King of Comedy''. Most recently, Scorsese has found a new muse with young actor Leonardo DiCaprio, with whom he has collaborated for four films, with two others confirmed to be in the works. Several critics have compared Scorsese's new partnership with DiCaprio with his previous one with De Niro. Other frequent collaborators include Victor Argo (6), Harry Northup (6), Harvey Keitel (5), Murray Moston (5), Joe Pesci (3), Frank Vincent (3) and Verna Bloom (3). Daniel Day-Lewis, who had become very reclusive to the Hollywood scene, Alec Baldwin, Ben Kingsley, Jude Law, Emily Mortimer, John C. Reilly, Frank Sivero, and Ray Winstone have also appeared in multiple Scorsese films. Before their deaths, Scorsese's parents, Charles Scorsese and Catherine Scorsese, appeared in bit parts, walk-ons or supporting roles, most notably in ''Goodfellas''.

For his crew, Scorsese frequently worked with editor Thelma Schoonmaker, cinematographers Michael Ballhaus and Robert Richardson, screenwriters Paul Schrader Mardik Martin, and John Logan, costume designer Sandy Powell, production designer Dante Ferretti, and composers Robbie Robertson, Howard Shore and Elmer Bernstein. Schoonmaker, Richardson, Powell, and Ferretti have all won Academy Awards in their respective categories on collaborations with Scorsese. Elaine and Saul Bass, the latter being Hitchcock's frequent title designer, designed the opening credits for ''Goodfellas'', ''The Age of Innocence'', ''Casino'' and ''Cape Fear''. He was the executive producer of the film ''Brides'', which was directed by Pantelis Voulgaris and starred Victoria Haralabidou, Damien Lewis, Steven Berkoff and Kosta Sommer.

! Actor/Actress

! ''Who's That Knocking at My Door'' (1968)

! ''Boxcar Bertha'' (1972)

! ''Mean Streets'' (1973)

! ''Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore'' (1974)

! ''Taxi Driver'' (1976)

! ''New York, New York (film)>New York, New York'' (1977)

! ''Raging Bull'' (1980)

! ''The King of Comedy (1983 film)>The King of Comedy'' (1983)

! ''After Hours (film)>After Hours'' (1985)

! ''The Color of Money'' (1986)

! ''The Last Temptation of Christ (film)>The Last Temptation of Christ'' (1988)

! ''Goodfellas'' (1990)

! ''Cape Fear (1991 film)>Cape Fear'' (1991)

! ''The Age of Innocence (film)>The Age of Innocence'' (1993)

! ''Casino (film)>Casino'' (1995)

! ''Kundun'' (1997)

! ''Bringing Out the Dead'' (1999)

! ''Gangs of New York'' (2002)

! ''The Aviator (2004 film)>The Aviator'' (2004)

! ''The Departed'' (2006)

! ''Shutter Island (film)>Shutter Island'' (2010)

! ''Hugo (film)>Hugo'' (2011)

! Victor Argo

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Awards and recognitions

Scorsese received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1997.

In 1998, the American Film Institute placed three Scorsese films on their list of the greatest movies in America: ''Raging Bull'' at #24, ''Taxi Driver'' at #47 and ''Goodfellas'' at #94. For their tenth anniversary edition of the list, ''Raging Bull'' was moved to #4, ''Taxi Driver'' was moved to #52 and ''Goodfellas'' was moved to #92.

Scorsese received the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic on January 18, 2001.

In 2001, AFI put two Scorsese films on their list of the most "heart-pounding movies" in American cinema: ''Taxi Driver'' at #22 and ''Raging Bull'' at #51.

On June 17, 2008, AFI put two of Scorsese's films on the AFI's 10 Top 10 list: ''Raging Bull'' at #1 for the Sports genre and ''Goodfellas'' at #2 for the Gangster genre.

At a ceremony in Paris, France, on January 5, 2005, Martin Scorsese was awarded the French Legion of Honor in recognition of his contribution to cinema.

In 2007, Scorsese won the Academy Award for Best Director for ''The Departed'', which also won Best Picture.

On September 11, 2007, the Kennedy Center Honors committee, which recognizes career excellence and cultural influence, named Scorsese as one of the honorees for the year.

Scorsese was the recipient of the 2010 Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 67th Golden Globe Awards.

On September 18, 2011, at the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards, Scorsese won in the category Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series, for his work on the series premiere of ''Boardwalk Empire''.

On January 15, 2012, at the 69th Golden Globe Awards, Scorsese won an award for Best Director on the 2011 movie ''Hugo''. Scorsese has earned praise from many film legends including Ingmar Bergman, Frank Capra, Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Elia Kazan, Akira Kurosawa, David Lean, Michael Powell, Satyajit Ray, and François Truffaut.

Filmography

See also

List of film collaborations

References

External links

Martin Scorsese Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)

They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?

Martin Scorsese Life in Pictures Interview recorded at BAFTA London – 2010

Scorsese interviews on ''BBC''

1999 Princeton Q&A; lecture (RealMedia video)

Podcast: Scorsese Discusses His Digital Workflow Techniques

Martin Scorsese's response to a Proust Questionnaire

Category:1942 births Category:Living people Category:Academy Award winners category:Actors from New York City Category:American documentary filmmakers Category:American film actors Category:American film directors Category:American film directors of Italian descent Category:American film editors Category:American film producers Category:American music video directors Category:American people of Sicilian descent Category:American Roman Catholics Category:American screenwriters Category:American voice actors Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:Best Director Academy Award winners Category:Best Director Golden Globe winners Category:César Award winners Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Film theorists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Légion d'honneur recipients Category:New York Democrats Category:People from Queens

ar:مارتن سكورسيزي az:Martin Skorseze bn:মার্টিন স্কোরসেজি zh-min-nan:Martin Scorsese be:Марцін Скарсэзэ be-x-old:Марцін Скарсэзэ bg:Мартин Скорсезе bs:Martin Scorsese ca:Martin Scorsese cs:Martin Scorsese cy:Martin Scorsese da:Martin Scorsese de:Martin Scorsese et:Martin Scorsese el:Μάρτιν Σκορσέζε es:Martin Scorsese eo:Martin Scorsese eu:Martin Scorsese fa:مارتین اسکورسیزی fr:Martin Scorsese gl:Martin Scorsese ko:마틴 스코세이지 hy:Մարտին Սկորսեզե hi:मार्टिन स्कोर्सेसे hr:Martin Scorsese io:Martin Scorsese id:Martin Scorsese is:Martin Scorsese it:Martin Scorsese he:מרטין סקורסזה ka:მარტინ სკორსეზე la:Martinus Scorsese lv:Mārtins Skorsēze lb:Martin Scorsese hu:Martin Scorsese ml:മാർട്ടിൻ സ്കോർസസെ arz:مارتين سكورسيزى mn:Мартин Скорсезе nl:Martin Scorsese ja:マーティン・スコセッシ no:Martin Scorsese oc:Martin Scorsese pms:Martin Scorsese pl:Martin Scorsese pt:Martin Scorsese ro:Martin Scorsese ru:Скорсезе, Мартин sa:मार्टिन स्कोर्सेसे sq:Martin Scorsese simple:Martin Scorsese sk:Martin Scorsese sl:Martin Scorsese sr:Мартин Скорсезе sh:Martin Scorsese fi:Martin Scorsese sv:Martin Scorsese ta:மார்ட்டின் ஸ்கோர்செசி te:మార్టిన్ స్కోర్సెస్ th:มาร์ติน สกอร์เซซี tr:Martin Scorsese uk:Мартін Скорсезе vi:Martin Scorsese war:Martin Scorsese zh:马丁·斯科塞斯

native name	中华人民共和国''Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó''
conventional long name	People's Republic of China
common name	the People's Republic of China
image coat	National Emblem of the People's Republic of China.svg
symbol type	National Emblem
map width	220px
national anthem	File:March of the Volunteers instrumental.ogg"March of the Volunteers"《义勇军进行曲》 (Pinyin: "Yìyǒngjūn Jìnxíngqǔ")
official languages	{{nobr|Modern Standard Mandarin(or Putonghua)}}

| languages_type = Official written language | languages = Vernacular Chinese | languages_sub = yes | languages2_type = Official script | languages2 = Simplified Chinese | languages2_sub = yes | regional_languages = Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur, Zhuang, and various others | ethnic_groups = 91.51% Han; 55 recognised minorities | capital = Beijing | latd=39 |latm=55 |latNS=N |longd=116 |longm=23 |longEW=E | largest_city = Shanghai | demonym = Chinese | government_type = Nominally Marxist–Leninist single-party state | leader_title1 = President | leader_name1 = Hu Jintao | leader_title2 = Premier | leader_name2 = Wen Jiabao | leader_title3 = General Secretary | leader_name3 = Hu Jintao | leader_title4 = Congress Chairman | leader_name4 = Wu Bangguo | leader_title5 = Conference Chairman | leader_name5 = Jia Qinglin | legislature = National People's Congress | sovereignty_type = Establishment | established_event1 = Unification of China under the Qin Dynasty | established_date1 = 221 BC | established_event2 = Republic established | established_date2 = 1 January 1912 | established_event3 = People's Republic of China proclaimed | established_date3 = 1 October 1949 | area_footnote = or 9,671,018 km² | area_km2 = 9,640,821 | area_sq_mi = 3704427 | area_rank = 3rd/4th | area_magnitude = 1 E12 | percent_water = 2.8 | population_census = 1,339,724,852 | population_census_year = 2010 | population_census_rank = 1st | pop_den_footnote = | population_density_km2 = 139.6 | population_density_sq_mi = 363.3 | population_density_rank = 53rd | GDP_nominal = $6.988 trillion | GDP_nominal_rank = 2nd | GDP_nominal_year = 2011 | GDP_nominal_per_capita = $5,184 | GDP_nominal_per_capita_rank = 90th | GDP_PPP_year = 2011 | GDP_PPP = $11.316 trillion | GDP_PPP_rank = 2nd | GDP_PPP_per_capita = $8,394 | GDP_PPP_per_capita_rank = 91st | Gini = 41.5 | Gini_year = 2007 | HDI_year = 2011 | HDI = 0.687 | HDI_rank = 101st | HDI_category = medium | currency = Renminbi (yuan) (¥) | currency_code = CNY | time_zone = China Standard Time | utc_offset = +8 | date_format = yyyy-mm-dd ''or'' yyyymd (CE; CE-1949) | drives_on = right, except for Hong Kong & Macau | cctld = .cn .中國 .中国 | calling_code = +86 | footnotes = a. Simple characterizations of the political structure since the 1980s are no longer possible.

b. Since its founding, the most important position in the PRC has been that of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (as Chairman before 1982). The Communist party and its leader hold ultimate power and authority over state and government.

c. excludes all disputed territories. Includes Chinese-administered area (Aksai Chin and Trans-Karakoram Tract, both territories claimed by India), Taiwan is not included. d. Information for mainland China only. Hong Kong, Macau, and territories under the jurisdiction of the Republic of China (Taiwan) are excluded. }}

China (; ; see also Names of China), officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is the most populous state in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres (3.7 million square miles). It is the world's second-largest country by land area, and the third- or fourth-largest in total area, depending on the definition of total area.

The People's Republic of China is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party of China. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four directly controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (SARs), Hong Kong and Macau. Its capital city is Beijing. The PRC also claims the island of Taiwan, which is controlled by the government of the Republic of China, as its 23rd province, a claim controversial due to the complex political status of Taiwan and the unresolved Chinese Civil War.

China’s landscape is vast and diverse, with forest steppes and the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts occupying the arid north and northwest near Mongolia and Central Asia, and subtropical forests being prevalent in the wetter south near Southeast Asia. The terrain of western China is rugged and elevated, with the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separating China from South and Central Asia. The world’s apex, Mt. Everest (8,848 m), lies on the China-Nepal border, while the world's second-highest point, K2 (8,611 m), is situated on China's border with Pakistan. The country’s lowest and the world’s third-lowest point, Lake Ayding (-154 m), is located in the Turpan Depression. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, have their sources in the Tibetan Plateau and continue to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China’s coastline along the Pacific Ocean is long (the 11th-longest in the world), and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East and South China Seas.

The ancient Chinese civilization—one of the world's earliest—flourished in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. China's political system was based on hereditary monarchies, known as dynasties, beginning with the semi-mythological Xia of the Yellow River basin (approx. 2000 BC) and ending with the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912. Since 221 BC, when the Qin Dynasty first conquered several states to form a Chinese empire, the country has fractured and been reformed numerous times. The Republic of China (ROC), founded in 1912 after the overthrow of the Qing dynasty, ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949. In the 1946–1949 phase of the Chinese Civil War, the Chinese Communists defeated the Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang) on the mainland and established the People's Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949. The Kuomintang relocated the ROC government to Taiwan, establishing its capital in Taipei. The ROC's jurisdiction is now limited to Taiwan and several outlying islands, including Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu. Since 1949, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (now widely known as "Taiwan") have remained in dispute over the sovereignty of China and the political status of Taiwan, mutually claiming each other's territory and competing for international diplomatic recognition. In 1971, the PRC gained admission to United Nations and took the Chinese seat as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the G-20. As of September 2011, all but 23 countries have recognized the PRC as the sole legitimate government of China.

Since the introduction of market-based economic reforms in 1978, China has become the world's fastest-growing major economy. As of 2012, it is the world's second-largest economy, after the United States, by both nominal GDP and purchasing power parity (PPP), and is also the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. On per capita terms, China ranked 90th by nominal GDP and 91st by GDP (PPP) in 2011, according to the IMF. China is a recognized nuclear weapons state and has the world's largest standing army, with the second-largest defense budget. In 2003, China became the third nation in the world, after the former Soviet Union and the United States, to independently launch a successful manned space mission. China has been characterized as a potential superpower by a number of academics, military analysts, and public policy and economics analysts.

Etymology

| zha=Cunghvaz Yinzminz Gunghozgoz | order=st }} The word "China" is derived from ''Cin'' (چین), a Persian name for China popularized in Europe by the account of the 13th-century explorer Marco Polo. The first recorded use in English dates from 1555. The Persian word is, in turn, derived from the Sanskrit word ''Cīna'' (चीन), which was used as a name for China as early as AD 150. There are various scholarly theories regarding the origin of this word. The traditional theory, proposed in the 17th century by Martino Martini, is that "China" is derived from "Qin" (), the westernmost of the Chinese kingdoms during the Zhou Dynasty, or from the succeeding Qin Dynasty (221–206 BC). The word ''Cīna'' is used in two Hindu scriptures – the ''Mahābhārata'' of the 5th century BC and the ''Laws of Manu'' of the 2nd century BC – to refer to a country located in the Tibetan-Burman borderlands east of India.

In China, common names for the country include ''Zhōngguó'' () and ''Zhōnghuá'' (), although the country's official name has been changed numerous times by successive dynasties and modern governments. The term ''Zhongguo'' appeared in various ancient texts, such as the ''Classic of History'' of the 6th century BC, and in pre-imperial times it was often used as a cultural concept to distinguish the ''Huaxia'' from the barbarians. Sometimes ''Zhongguo'', which can be either singular or plural, referring to the group of states in the central plain. The Chinese were not unique in regarding their country as "central", since other civilizations had the same view.

History

Prehistory

Archaeological evidence suggests that early hominids inhabited China between 250,000 and 2.24 million years ago. A cave in Zhoukoudian (near present-day Beijing) exhibits fossils dated at between 300,000 and 780,000 BC. The fossils are of Peking Man, an example of ''Homo erectus'' who used fire.

The earliest evidence of a fully modern human in China comes from Liujiang County, Guangxi, where a cranium has been found and dated at approximately 67,000 years old. Controversy persists over the dating of the Liujiang remains (a partial skeleton from Minatogawa in Okinawa).

Early dynastic rule

Chinese tradition names the first dynasty Xia, but it was considered mythical until scientific excavations found early Bronze Age sites at Erlitou in Henan Province in 1959. Archaeologists have since uncovered urban sites, bronze implements, and tombs in locations cited as Xia's in ancient historical texts, but it is impossible to verify that these remains are of the Xia without written records from the period.

The first Chinese dynasty that left historical records, the loosely feudal Shang (Yin), settled along the Yellow River in eastern China from the 17th to the 11th century BC. The oracle bone script of the Shang Dynasty represent the oldest forms of Chinese writing found and the direct ancestor of modern Chinese characters used throughout East Asia. The Shang were invaded from the west by the Zhou, who ruled from the 12th to the 5th century BC, until their centralized authority was slowly eroded by feudal warlords. Many independent states eventually emerged out of the weakened Zhou state, and continually waged war with each other in the Spring and Autumn Period, only occasionally deferring to the Zhou king. By the time of the Warring States Period, there were seven powerful sovereign states, each with its own king, ministry and army.

Imperial China

The first unified Chinese state was established by Qin Shi Huang of the Qin state in 221 BC. Qin Shi Huang proclaimed himself the "First Emperor" (始皇帝), and imposed many reforms throughout China, notably the forced standardization of the Chinese language, measurements, length of cart axles, and currency. The Qin Dynasty lasted only fifteen years, falling soon after Qin Shi Huang's death, as its harsh legalist and authoritarian policies led to widespread rebellion.

The subsequent Han Dynasty ruled China between 206 BC and 220 AD, and created a lasting Han cultural identity among its populace that extends to the present day. The Han Dynasty expanded the empire's territory considerably with military campaigns reaching Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia and Central Asia, and also helped establish the Silk Road in Central Asia. China was for a large part of the last two millennia the world's largest economy. However, in the later part of the Qing Dynasty, China's economic development began to slow and Europe's rapid development during and after the Industrial Revolution enabled it to surpass China.

After the collapse of Han, another period of disunion followed, including the highly chivalric period of the Three Kingdoms. Independent Chinese states of this period such as Wu opened diplomatic relations with Japan, introducing the Chinese writing system there. In 580 AD, China was reunited under the Sui. However, the Sui Dynasty was short-lived after a failure in the Goguryeo-Sui Wars (598–614) weakened it.

Under the succeeding Tang and Song dynasties, Chinese technology and culture reached its zenith. The Tang Empire was at its height of power until the middle of the 8th century, when the An Shi Rebellion destroyed the prosperity of the empire. The Song Dynasty was the first government in world history to issue paper money and the first Chinese polity to establish a permanent standing navy. Between the 10th and 11th centuries, the population of China doubled in size. This growth came about through expanded rice cultivation in central and southern China, and the production of abundant food surpluses.

Within its borders, the Northern Song Dynasty had a population of some 100 million people. The Song Dynasty was a culturally rich period for philosophy and the arts. Landscape art and portrait painting were brought to new levels of maturity and complexity after the Tang Dynasty, and social elites gathered to view art, share their own, and trade precious artworks. Philosophers such as Cheng Yi and Chu Hsi reinvigorated Confucianism with new commentary, infused Buddhist ideals, and emphasized a new organization of classic texts that brought about the core doctrine of Neo-Confucianism. In 1271, the Mongol leader and fifth Khagan of the Mongol Empire Kublai Khan established the Yuan Dynasty, with the last remnant of the Song Dynasty falling to the Yuan in 1279. Before the Mongol invasion, Chinese dynasties reportedly had approximately 120 million inhabitants; after the conquest was completed in 1279, the 1300 census reported roughly 60 million people.

Late dynastic rule

A peasant named Zhu Yuanzhang overthrew the Yuan Dynasty in 1368 and founded the Ming Dynasty. Ming Dynasty thinkers such as Wang Yangming would further critique and expand Neo-Confucianism with ideas of individualism and innate morality that would have tremendous impact on later Japanese thought. Chosun Korea also became a nominal vassal state of Ming China and adopted much of its Neo-Confucian bureaucratic structure.

Under the Ming Dynasty, China had another golden age, with one of the strongest navies in the world, a rich and prosperous economy and a flourishing of the arts and culture. It was during this period that Zheng He led explorations throughout the world, possibly reaching America. During the early Ming Dynasty China's capital was moved from Nanjing to Beijing. In 1644 Beijing was sacked by a coalition of rebel forces led by Li Zicheng, a minor Ming official turned leader of the peasant revolt. The last Ming Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide when the city fell. The Manchu Qing Dynasty then allied with Ming Dynasty general Wu Sangui and overthrew Li's short-lived Shun Dynasty, and subsequently seized control of Beijing, which became the new capital of the Qing Dynasty.

The Qing Dynasty, which lasted until 1912, was the last dynasty in China. In the 19th century the Qing Dynasty adopted a defensive posture towards European imperialism, even though it engaged in imperialistic expansion into Central Asia. At this time China awoke to the significance of the rest of the world, the West in particular. As China opened up to foreign trade and missionary activity, opium produced by British India was forced onto Qing China. Two Opium Wars with Britain weakened the Emperor's control. European imperialism proved to be disastrous for China:''

''The Arrow War (1856–1860) [2nd Opium War] saw another disastrous defeat for China. The subsequent passing of the humiliating Treaty of Tianjin in 1856 and the Beijing Conventions of 1860 opened up more of the country to foreign penetrations and more ports for their vessels. Hong Kong was ceded over to the British. Thus, the "unequal treaties system" was established. Heavy indemnities had to be paid by China, and more territory and control were taken over by the foreigners.''

The weakening of the Qing regime, and the apparent humiliation of the unequal treaties in the eyes of the Chinese people had several consequences. One consequence was the Taiping Rebellion, a civil war which lasted from 1851 to 1862. The rebellion was led by Hong Xiuquan, who was partly influenced by an idiosyncratic interpretation of Christianity. Hong believed himself to be the son of God and the younger brother of Jesus. Although the Qing forces were eventually victorious, the civil war was one of the bloodiest in human history, costing at least 20 million lives (more than the total number of fatalities in World War I), with some estimates of up to two hundred million. Other costly rebellions followed the Taiping Rebellion, such as the Punti-Hakka Clan Wars (1855–67), Nien Rebellion (1851–1868), Miao Rebellion (1854–73), Panthay Rebellion (1856–1873) and the Dungan revolt (1862–1877). These rebellions resulted in an estimated loss of several million lives each and led to disastrous results for the economy and the countryside. The flow of British opium hastened the empire's decline. In the 19th century, the age of colonialism was at its height and the great Chinese Diaspora began. About 35 million overseas Chinese live in Southeast Asia today. The famine in 1876–79 claimed between 9 and 13 million lives in northern China. From 108 BC to 1911 AD, China experienced 1,828 famines, or one per year, somewhere in the empire.

While China was wracked by continuous war, Meiji Japan succeeded in rapidly modernizing its military and set its sights on Korea and Manchuria. At the request of the Korean emperor, the Chinese government sent troops to aid in suppressing the Tonghak Rebellion in 1894. However, Japan also sent troops to Korea, leading to the First Sino-Japanese War, which resulted in Qing China's loss of influence in the Korean Peninsula as well as the cession of Taiwan to Japan.

Following this series of defeats, a reform plan for the empire to become a modern Meiji-style constitutional monarchy was drafted by the Guangxu Emperor in 1898, but was opposed and stopped by the Empress Dowager Cixi, who placed Emperor Guangxu under house arrest in a coup d'état. Further destruction followed the ill-fated 1900 Boxer Rebellion against westerners in Beijing.

By the early 20th century, mass civil disorder had begun, and calls for reform and revolution were heard across the country. The 38-year-old Emperor Guangxu died under house arrest on 14 November 1908, suspiciously just a day before Cixi's own death. With the throne empty, he was succeeded by Cixi's handpicked heir, his two year old nephew Puyi, who became the Xuantong Emperor. Guangxu's consort became the Empress Dowager Longyu. In another coup de'tat, Yuan Shikai overthrew the last Qing emperor, and forced empress Dowager Longyu to sign the abdication decree as regent in 1912, ending two thousand years of imperial rule in China. She died, childless, in 1913.

Republic of China (1912–1949)

On 1 January 1912, the Republic of China was established, heralding the end of the Qing Dynasty. Sun Yat-sen of the Kuomintang (the KMT or Nationalist Party) was proclaimed provisional president of the republic. However, the presidency was later given to Yuan Shikai, a former Qing general, who had ensured the defection of the entire Beiyang Army from the Qing Empire to the revolution. In 1915, Yuan proclaimed himself Emperor of China but was forced to abdicate and return the state to a republic when he realized it was an unpopular move, not only with the population but also with his own Beiyang Army and its commanders.

After Yuan Shikai's death in 1916, China was politically fragmented, with an internationally recognized but virtually powerless national government seated in Beijing. Warlords in various regions exercised actual control over their respective territories. In the late 1920s, the Kuomintang, under Chiang Kai-shek, was able to reunify the country under its own control with a military campaign and deft political maneuverings known as the "Northern Expedition". The Kuomintang moved the nation's capital to Nanjing and implemented "political tutelage", an intermediate stage of political development outlined in Sun Yat-sen's program for transforming China into a modern, democratic state. Sun had outlined this program with his "San Min Zhu Yi" Doctrine. Effectively, political tutelage meant one-party rule by the Kuomintang, but the party was politically divided into competing cliques. This political division made it difficult for Chiang to battle the Communists, which the Kuomintang had been warring against since 1927 in the Chinese Civil War. This war continued successfully for the Kuomintang, especially after the Communists were forced to retreat in the Long March, until the Xi'an Incident and Japanese aggression forced Chiang to confront Imperial Japan.

The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) (part of World War II) forced an uneasy alliance between the Nationalists and the Communists as well as causing around 20 million Chinese civilian deaths. The Japanese "three-all policy" in north China—''"kill all, burn all and destroy all"'', was one example of wartime atrocities committed on a civilian population. With the surrender of Japan in 1945, China emerged victorious but financially drained. The continued distrust between the Nationalists and the Communists led to the resumption of the Chinese Civil War. In 1947, constitutional rule was established, but because of the ongoing Civil War many provisions of the ROC constitution were never implemented in mainland China.

1949 to present

Major combat in the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 with the Communist Party of China in control of mainland China, and the Kuomintang (KMT) retreating to Taiwan, reducing the ROC's territory to only Taiwan, Hainan, and their surrounding islands. On 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China. "Communist China" and "Red China" were two common names for the PRC. In 1950, the Chinese Red Army – newly renamed the People's Liberation Army – succeeded in capturing Hainan from the Republic of China, occupying Tibet, and defeating the majority of the remaining Kuomintang forces in Yunnan and Xinjiang provinces, though some Kuomintang holdouts survived until much later.

Mao encouraged population growth, and under his leadership China's population almost doubled from around 550 million to over 900 million. However, the economic and social plan known as the Great Leap Forward resulted in an estimated 45 million deaths, mostly from starvation. In 1966, Mao and his allies launched the Cultural Revolution, which would last until Mao's death a decade later. The Cultural Revolution, motivated by power struggles within the Party and a fear of the Soviet Union, led to a major upheaval in Chinese society. In 1972, at the peak of the Sino-Soviet split, Mao and Zhou Enlai met Richard Nixon in Beijing to establish relations with the United States. In the same year, the PRC was admitted to the United Nations in place of the Republic of China for China's membership of the United Nations, and permanent membership of the Security Council.

After Mao's death in 1976 and the arrest of the Gang of Four, blamed for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping quickly wrested power from Mao's anointed successor Hua Guofeng. Although he never became the head of the party or state himself, Deng was in fact the Paramount Leader of China at that time, his influence within the Party led the country to significant economic reforms. The Communist Party subsequently loosened governmental control over citizens' personal lives and the communes were disbanded with many peasants receiving multiple land leases, which greatly increased incentives and agricultural production. This turn of events marked China's transition from a planned economy to a mixed economy with an increasingly open market environment, a system termed by some "market socialism"; the Communist Party of China officially describes it as "socialism with Chinese characteristics". The PRC adopted its current constitution on 4 December 1982.

The death of pro-reform official Hu Yaobang helped to spark the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, during which students and others campaigned for several months, speaking out against corruption and in favour of greater political reform, including democratic rights and freedom of speech. However, they were eventually put down on 4 June when PLA troops and vehicles entered and forcibly cleared the square, resulting in numerous casualties. This event was widely reported and brought worldwide condemnation and sanctions against the government. The "Tank Man" incident in particular became famous. President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji, both former mayors of Shanghai, led the nation in the 1990s. Under Jiang and Zhu's ten years of administration, China's economic performance pulled an estimated 150 million peasants out of poverty and sustained an average annual gross domestic product growth rate of 11.2%. The country formally joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

Although China's economic growth has made it the world's second-largest economy, the government has begun to worry that rapid economic growth has negatively impacted the country's resources and environment. Another concern is that certain sectors of society are not sufficiently benefiting from the PRC's economic development; one example of this is the wide gap between urban and rural areas. As a result, under President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, the PRC initiated policies to address these issues of equitable distribution of resources, though the outcome remains to be seen. More than 40 million farmers have been displaced from their land, usually for economic development, contributing to the 87,000 demonstrations and riots across China in 2005. For much of the PRC's population, living standards have seen extremely large improvements, and freedom continues to expand, but political controls remain tight and rural areas poor.

Geography

Political geography

The People's Republic of China is the second-largest country in the world by land area after Russia and is either the third- or fourth-largest by total area, after Russia, Canada and, depending on the definition of total area, the United States. China's total area is generally stated as being approximately . Specific area figures range from according to the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', according to the UN Demographic Yearbook, to according to the CIA World Factbook, and including Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract, which are controlled by China and claimed by India. None of these figures include the of territory ceded to China by Tajikistan following the ratification of a Sino-Tajik border agreement in January 2011.

According to the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', the total area of the United States, at , is slightly smaller than that of China. Meanwhile, the CIA World Factbook states that China's total area was greater than that of the United States until the coastal waters of the Great Lakes was added to the United States' total area in 1996.

China has the longest combined land border in the world, measuring from the mouth of the Yalu River to the Gulf of Tonkin. China borders 14 nations, more than any other country except Russia, which also borders 14. China extends across much of East Asia, bordering Vietnam, Laos, and Burma in Southeast Asia; India, Bhutan, Nepal and Pakistan in South Asia; Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia; a small section of Russian Altai and Mongolia in Inner Asia; and the Russian Far East and North Korea in Northeast Asia.

Additionally, China shares maritime boundaries with South Korea, Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. The PRC and the Republic of China (Taiwan) make mutual claims over each other's territority and the frontier between areas under their respective control is closest near the islands of Kinmen and Matsu, off the Fujian coast, but otherwise run through the Taiwan Strait. The PRC and ROC assert identical claims over the entirety of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, and the southern-most extent of these claims reach ''Zengmu Ansha'' (James Shoal), which would form a maritime frontier with Malaysia.

Landscape and climate

The territory of China lies between latitudes 18° and 54° N, and longitudes 73° and 135° E. The country's vast size gives it a wide variety of landscapes. In the east, along the shores of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, there are extensive and densely populated alluvial plains, while on the edges of the Inner Mongolian plateau in the north, broad grasslands are visible. Southern China is dominated by hill country and low mountain ranges, while the central-east hosts the deltas of China's two major rivers, the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. Other major rivers include the Xi, Mekong, Brahmaputra and Amur. To the west, major mountain ranges, most notably the Himalayas, and high plateaus feature among the more arid landscapes of the north, such as the Taklamakan and the Gobi Desert. China's highest point, Mt. Everest (8848m), lies on the Sino-Nepalese border. The country's lowest point is the dried lake bed of Ayding Lake (-154m) in the Turpan Depression.

A major environmental issue in China is the continued expansion of its deserts, particularly the Gobi Desert, which is currently the world's fifth-largest desert. Although barrier tree lines planted since the 1970s have reduced the frequency of sandstorms, prolonged drought and poor agricultural practices have resulted in dust storms plaguing northern China each spring, which then spread to other parts of East Asia, including Korea and Japan. According to China's environmental watchdog, Sepa, China is losing a million acres (4,000 km²) per year to desertification. Water quality, erosion, and pollution control have become important issues in China's relations with other countries. Melting glaciers in the Himalayas could potentially lead to water shortages for hundreds of millions of people.

China's climate is mainly dominated by dry seasons and wet monsoons, which lead to a pronounced temperature differences between winter and summer. In the winter, northern winds coming from high-latitude areas are cold and dry; in summer, southern winds from coastal areas at lower latitudes are warm and moist. The climate in China differs from region to region because of the country's extensive and complex topography.

Biodiversity

China is one of 17 megadiverse countries, lying in two of the world's major ecozones: the Palearctic and the Indomalaya. In the Palearctic zone, mammals such as the horse, camel, tapir, and jerboa can be found. Among the species found in the Indomalaya region are the Leopard Cat, bamboo rat, treeshrew, and various monkey and ape species. Some overlap exists between the two regions due to natural dispersal and migration; deer, antelope, bears, wolves, pigs, and numerous rodent species can all be found in China's diverse climatic and geological environments. The famous giant panda is found only in a limited area along the Yangtze River. China suffers from a continuing problem with trade in endangered species, although there are now laws to prohibit such activities.

China also hosts a variety of forest types. Cold coniferous forests predominate in the north of the country, supporting animal species such as moose and the Asian black bear, along with over 120 bird species. Moist conifer forests can have thickets of bamboo as an understorey, replaced by rhododendrons in higher montane stands of juniper and yew. Subtropical forests, which dominate central and southern China, support as many as 146,000 species of flora. Tropical and seasonal rainforests, though confined to Yunnan and Hainan Island, contain a quarter of all the plant and animal species found in China.

Environment

In recent decades, China has suffered from severe environmental deterioration and pollution. While regulations such as the 1979 Environmental Protection Law are fairly stringent, enforcement of them is poor, as they are frequently disregarded by local communities and government officials in favour of rapid economic development.

Environmental campaigners such as Ma Jun have warned of the danger that water pollution poses to Chinese society. According to the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources, roughly 300 million Chinese do not have access to safe drinking water, and 40% of China’s rivers have been polluted by industrial and agricultural waste as of late 2011. This crisis is compounded by the perennial problem of water shortages, with 400 out of 600 surveyed Chinese cities reportedly short of drinking water.

However, China is the world's leading investor in renewable energy technologies, with $34.6 billion invested in 2009 alone. China produces more wind turbines and solar panels than any other country, and renewable energy projects, such as solar water heating, are widely pursued at the local level. By 2009, over 17% of China's energy was derived from renewable sources – most notably hydroelectric power plants, of which China has a total installed capacity of 197 GW. In 2011, the Chinese government announced plans to invest four trillion yuan (US$618.55 billion) in water infrastructure projects over a ten-year period, and to complete construction of a flood prevention and anti-drought system by 2020.

Politics

The PRC is regarded by several political scientists as one of the world's five remaining Communist states (along with Vietnam, North Korea, Laos, and Cuba), but simple characterizations of PRC's political structure since the 1980s are no longer possible. The PRC government has been variously described as communist and socialist, but also as authoritarian, with heavy restrictions remaining in many areas, most notably on the Internet, the press, freedom of assembly, reproductive rights, and freedom of religion. Its current political/economic system has been termed by its leaders as "Socialism with Chinese characteristics".

Compared to its closed-door policies until the mid-1970s, the liberalization of the PRC has resulted in the administrative climate being less restrictive than before. The PRC is far different from liberal democracy or social democracy that exists in most of Europe or North America, and the National People's Congress (highest state body) has been described as a "rubber stamp" body. The PRC's incumbent President is Hu Jintao, who is also the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, and its Premier is Wen Jiabao, who is also a senior member of the CPC Politburo Standing Committee.

The country is ruled by the Communist Party of China (CPC), whose power is enshrined in China's constitution. The political system is partly decentralized, with limited democratic processes internal to the party and at local village levels, although these experiments have been marred by corruption. There are other political parties in the PRC, referred to in China as democratic parties, which participate in the National People's Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

There have been some moves toward political liberalization, in that open contested elections are now held at the village and town levels, and that legislatures have shown some assertiveness from time to time. However, the Party retains effective control over government appointments: in the absence of meaningful opposition, the CPC wins by default most of the time. Political concerns in the PRC include lessening the growing gap between rich and poor and fighting corruption within the government leadership.

The level of support to the government action and the management of the nation is among the highest in the world, with 86% of people who express satisfaction with the way things are going in their country and with their nation's economy according to a 2008 Pew Research Center survey.

Administrative divisions

The People's Republic of China has administrative control over 22 provinces, and considers Taiwan to be its 23rd province, although Taiwan is currently governed by the Republic of China, which disputes the PRC's claim. The PRC also has five autonomous regions, each with a designated minority group; four municipalities; and two Special Administrative Regions (SARs), which enjoy a degree of political autonomy. These 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, and four municipalities can be collectively referred to as "mainland China", a term which usually excludes the SARs of Hong Kong and Macau.

Foreign relations

The PRC has diplomatic relations with 171 countries and maintains embassies in 162. Its legitimacy is disputed by the Republic of China and a few other countries; it is thus the largest and wealthiest state with limited recognition. Sweden was the first western country to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic on 9 May 1950. In 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic of China as the sole representative of China in the United Nations and as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. The PRC was also a former member and leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, and still considers itself an advocate for developing countries.

Under its interpretation of the One-China policy, the PRC has made it a precondition to establishing diplomatic relations that the other country acknowledges its claim to Taiwan and severs official ties with the government of the Republic of China. PRC officials have protested on numerous occasions when foreign countries have made diplomatic overtures to Taiwan, especially in the matter of armament sales. Political meetings between foreign government officials and the 14th Dalai Lama are also opposed by the PRC, as it considers Tibet to be formally part of China.

Much of China's current foreign policy is reportedly based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence of Zhou Enlai—non-interference in other states' affairs, non-aggression, peaceful coexistence, equality and mutual benefits. China's foreign policy is also driven by the concept of "harmony without uniformity", which encourages diplomatic relations between states despite ideological differences. This policy has led China to support states that are regarded as dangerous or repressive by Western nations, such as Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Iran. Conflicts with foreign countries have occurred at times in China's recent history, particularly with the United States; for example, the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo conflict in May 1999 and the US-China spy plane incident in April 2001. The PRC's foreign relations with many Western nations suffered for a time following the military crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, although in recent years China has improved its diplomatic links with the West.

Trade relations

In recent decades, the PRC has played an increasing role in calling for free trade areas and security pacts amongst its Asia-Pacific neighbors. In 2004, the PRC proposed an entirely new East Asia Summit (EAS) framework as a forum for regional security issues, pointedly excluding the United States. The EAS, which includes ASEAN Plus Three, India, Australia and New Zealand, held its inaugural summit in 2005. The PRC is also a founding member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), along with Russia and the Central Asian republics.

In 2000, the U.S. Congress approved "permanent normal trade relations" (PNTR) with China, allowing Chinese exports in at the same low tariffs as goods from most other countries. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush asserted that free trade would gradually open China to democratic reform. Bush was furthermore an advocate of China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). China has a significant trade surplus with the United States, its most important export market. In the early 2010s, U.S. politicians argued that the Chinese yuan was significantly undervalued, giving China an unfair trade advantage.

Sinophobic attitudes often target Chinese minorities and nationals living outside of China. Sometimes, such anti-Chinese attitudes turn violent, as occurred during the 13 May Incident in Malaysia in 1969 and the Jakarta riots of May 1998 in Indonesia, in which more than 2,000 people died. In recent years, a number of anti-Chinese riots and incidents have also occurred in Africa and Oceania. Anti-Chinese sentiment is often rooted in socio-economics.

Sino-Japanese relations

The relationship between China and Japan has been strained at times by Japan's perceived refusal to acknowledge its wartime past to the satisfaction of the PRC. Revisionist comments made by prominent Japanese officials and some Japanese history textbooks regarding the 1937 Rape of Nanking have been a focus of particular controversy. Sino-Japanese relations warmed considerably after Shinzo Abe became the Prime Minister of Japan in September 2006, and a joint historical study conducted by the PRC and Japan released a report in 2010 which pointed toward a new consensus on the issue of World War 2-era atrocities. However, in the early 2010s, relations cooled once more, with Japan accusing China of withholding its reserves of valuable rare earth elements.

Territorial disputes

China has been involved in a number of international territorial disputes, mostly resulting from the legacy of unequal treaties imposed on China during the historical period of New Imperialism. Since the 1990s, the PRC has been entering negotiations to resolve its disputed land borders, usually by offering concessions and accepting less than half of the disputed territory with each party. The PRC's only remaining land border disputes are a disputed border with India and an undefined border with Bhutan. China is additionally involved in more minor multilateral disputes over the ownership of several small islands in the East and South China Seas.

China and the developing world

China is heavily engaged, both politically and economically, with numerous nations in the developing world. Most notably, they have followed a policy of engaging with African nations for trade and bilateral co-operation. Xinhua, China's official news agency, states that there are no less than 750,000 Chinese nationals working or living in Africa. China has furthermore strengthened its ties with larger developing economies, becoming the largest trading partner of Brazil and building strategic links with Argentina. Along with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, China is a member of the BRICS group of emerging major economies, and hosted the group's third official summit at Sanya in Hainan Province in April 2011.

Emerging superpower

China is regularly cited as a potential new superpower, with certain commentators pointing out that its rapid economic progress, military might, very large population, and increasing international influence could see it attain a prominent global role in the 21st century. Others, however, warn that economic bubbles and demographic imbalances could slow China's growth as the century progresses.

Sociopolitical issues and reform

The Chinese democracy movement, social activists, and some members of the Communist Party of China have all identified the need for social and political reform. While economic and social controls have been greatly relaxed in China since the 1970s, political freedom is still tightly restricted. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China states that the "fundamental rights" of citizens include freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, universal suffrage, and property rights. However, in practice, these provisions do not afford significant protection against criminal prosecution by the State.

As the Chinese economy expanded following Deng Xiaoping's 1978 reforms, tens of millions of rural Chinese who have moved to the cities find themselves treated as second-class citizens by China's ''hukou'' household registration system, which controls state benefits. Property rights are often poorly protected, and eminent domain land seizures have had a disproportionate effect on poorer peasants. In 2003, the average Chinese farmer paid three times more taxes than the average urban dweller, despite having one-sixth of the annual income. However, a number of rural taxes have since been reduced or abolished, and additional social services provided to rural dwellers.

Censorship of political speech and information, most notably on the Internet, is openly and routinely used in China to silence criticism of the government and the ruling Communist Party. In 2005, Reporters Without Borders ranked the PRC 159th out of 167 states in its Annual World Press Freedom Index, indicating a very low level of perceived press freedom. The government has suppressed demonstrations by organizations that it considers a potential threat to "social stability", as was the case with the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. The Communist Party has had mixed success in controlling information: a powerful and pervasive media control system faces equally strong market forces, an increasingly educated citizenry, and technological and cultural changes that are making China more open to the wider world, especially on environmental issues. However, attempts are still made by the Chinese government to control public access to outside information, with online searches for politically sensitive material being blocked by the so-called Great Firewall.

A number of foreign governments and NGOs routinely criticize the PRC's human rights record, alleging widespread civil rights violations, including systematic use of lengthy detention without trial, forced confessions, torture, mistreatment of prisoners, and restrictions of freedom of speech, assembly, association, religion, the press, and labor rights. China executes more people than any other country, accounting for 72% of the world's total in 2009, though it is not the largest executioner per capita.

The PRC government has responded to foreign criticism by arguing that the notion of human rights should take into account a country's present level of economic development, and focus more on the people's rights to subsistence and development in poorer countries. The rise in the standard of living, literacy, and life expectancy for the average Chinese in the last three decades is seen by the government as tangible progress made in human rights. Efforts in the past decade to combat deadly natural disasters, such as the perennial Yangtze River floods, and work-related accidents are also portrayed in China as progress in human rights for a still largely poor country.

The PRC government remains divided over the issue of political reform. Some high-ranking politicians have spoken out in favor reforms, while others remain more conservative. In 2010, Premier Wen Jiabao stated that the PRC needs "to gradually improve the democratic election system so that state power will truly belong to the people and state power will be used to serve the people." Despite his status, Wen's comments were later censored by the government.

As the social, cultural and political consequences of economic growth and reform become increasingly manifest, tensions between the conservatives and reformists in the Communist Party are sharpening. Zhou Tianyong, the vice director of research of the Central Party School, argues that gradual political reform as well as repression of those pushing for overly rapid change over the next thirty years will be essential if China is to avoid an overly turbulent transition to a democratic, middle-class-dominated polity. Some Chinese look back to the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, and fear chaos if the Communist Party should lose control of the domestic situation.

Military

With 2.3 million active troops, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the largest standing military force in the world, commanded by the Central Military Commission (CMC). The PLA consists of the People's Liberation Army Ground Force (PLAGF), the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), and a strategic nuclear force, the Second Artillery Corps. The official announced budget of the PLA for 2009 was $70 billion. However, the United States government has claimed that China does not report its real level of military spending, which is allegedly much higher than the official budget. The Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the real Chinese military budget for 2008 was between US$105 billion and US$150 billion. According to SIPRI, China's military expenditure in 2010 totalled US$114.3 billion (808 billion yuan), constituting the world's second-largest military budget.

As a recognised nuclear weapons state, China is considered both a major regional military power and an emerging military superpower. As of August 2011, China's Second Artillery Corps is believed to maintain at least 195 nuclear missiles, including 75 ICBMs. Nonetheless, China is the only member of the UN Security Council to have relatively limited power projection capabilities. To offset this, it has begun developing power projection assets, such as aircraft carriers, and has established a network of foreign military relationships that has been compared to a string of pearls.

The PRC has made significant progress in modernizing its military since the early 2000s. It has purchased state-of-the-art Russian fighter jets, such as the Sukhoi Su-30s, and has also produced its own modern fighters, most notably the Chinese J-10s and the J-11s. China is furthermore engaged in developing an indigenous stealth aircraft, the Chengdu J-20. The PRC's ground forces have also undergone significant modernisations, replacing its ageing Soviet-derived tank inventory with numerous variants of the modern Type 99 tank, and upgrading its battlefield C3I systems to enhance its network-centric warfare capabilities.

China has also acquired and improved upon the Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile system, which is considered to be among the most effective aircraft-intercepting systems in the world. Russia has since produced the next-generation S-400 Triumf system, with China reportedly having spent $500 million on a downgraded export version of it. A number of indigenous missile technologies have also been developed – in 2007, China conducted a successful test of an anti-satellite missile, and its first indigenous land-attack cruise missile, the CJ-10, entered service in 2009. In 2011, the Pentagon reported that China was believed to be testing the JL-2 missile, a new submarine-launched nuclear ICBM with multiple-warhead delivery capabilities.

In recent years, much attention has been focused on enhancing the blue-water capabilities of the People's Liberation Army Navy. In August 2011, China's first aircraft carrier, the refurbished Soviet vessel ''Varyag'', began sea trials. China furthermore maintains a substantial fleet of submarines, including several nuclear-powered attack and ballistic missile submarines. On 13 March 2011, the PLAN missile frigate ''Xuzhou'' was spotted off the coast of Libya, marking the first time in history a Chinese warship sailed into the Mediterranean. The ship's entrance into the Mediterranean was officially part of a humanitarian mission to rescue PRC nationals from the 2011 Libyan civil war, though analysts such as Fareed Zakaria viewed the mission as also being an attempt to increase the PRC's global military presence.

Little information is available regarding the motivations supporting China's military modernization. A 2007 report by the US Secretary of Defense noted that "China's actions in certain areas increasingly appear inconsistent with its declaratory policies". For its part, China claims it maintains an army purely for defensive purposes.

Economy

From its founding in 1949 until late 1978, the People's Republic of China was a Soviet-style centrally planned economy, without private businesses or capitalism. To propel the country towards a modern, industrialized communist society, Mao Zedong instituted the Great Leap Forward in the early 1960s, although this had decidedly mixed economic results. Following Mao's death in 1976 and the consequent end of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping and the new Chinese leadership began to reform the economy and move towards a more market-oriented mixed economy under one-party rule. Collectivization of the agriculture was dismantled and farmlands were privatized to increase productivity. In 1978, China and Japan began normalized diplomatic relations, and China started borrowing money from Japan in soft loans. Since 1978, Japan has been China's most significant foreign donor. Modern-day China is mainly characterised as having a market economy based on private property ownership, and is one of the leading examples of state capitalism.

Under the post-Mao market reforms, a wide variety of small-scale private enterprises were encouraged, while the government relaxed price controls and promoted foreign investment. Foreign trade was focused upon as a major vehicle of growth, leading to the creation of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), first in Shenzhen and then in other Chinese cities. Inefficient state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were restructured by introducing western-style management systems, with unprofitable ones being closed outright, resulting in massive job losses. By the latter part of 2010, China was reversing some of its economic liberalization initiatives, with state-owned companies buying up independent businesses in the steel, auto and energy industries.

Since economic liberalization began in 1978, China's investment- and export-led economy has grown almost a hundredfold and is the fastest-growing major economy in the world. According to the IMF, China's annual average GDP growth between 2001 and 2010 was 10.5%, and the Chinese economy is predicted to grow at an average annual rate of 9.5% between 2011 and 2015. Between 2007 and 2011, China's economic growth rate was equivalent to all of the G7 countries' growth combined. According to the Global Growth Generators index announced by Citigroup in February 2011, China has a very high 3G growth rating.

As of 2012, China has the world's second-largest nominal GDP, totalling approximately 47.2 trillion yuan (US$7.47 trillion) according to the country's National Bureau of Statistics. However, China's 2011 nominal GDP per capita of US$5,184 puts it behind around ninety countries (out of 183 countries on the IMF list) in global GDP per capita rankings. If PPP is taken into account in GDP figures, China is again second only to the United States – in 2010, its PPP GDP reached $10.085 trillion, corresponding to $7,518 per capita. In 2009, China's primary, secondary, and tertiary industries contributed 10.6%, 46.8%, and 42.6% respectively to its total GDP.

The PRC is the third-most-visited country in the world, with 55.7 million inbound international visitors in 2010. It is a member of the WTO and is the world's second-largest trading power behind the US, with a total international trade value of US$2.97 trillion–1.58 trillion in exports (#1) and US$1.39 trillion in imports (#2). Its foreign exchange reserves had reached US$2.85 trillion by the end of 2010, an increase of 18.7% over the previous year, making its reserves by far the world's largest. The PRC owns an estimated $1.6 trillion of US securities. The PRC, holding US$1.16 trillion in US Treasury bonds, is the largest foreign holder of US public debt. China is the world's third-largest recipient of inward FDI, attracting US$92.4 billion in 2008 alone, and China increasingly invests abroad, with a total outward FDI of US$52.2 billion in 2008 making it the world's sixth-largest outward investor. In 2010, China's inward FDI was $106 billion, marking a 16% increase over 2009.

The PRC's success has been primarily due to manufacturing as a low-cost producer. This is attributed to a combination of cheap labor, good infrastructure, relatively high productivity, favorable government policy, and a possibly undervalued exchange rate. The latter has been sometimes blamed for the PRC's huge trade surplus (US$262.7 billion in 2007) and has become a major source of dispute between the PRC and its major trading partners—the US, EU, and Japan—despite the yuan having been de-pegged and having risen in value by 20% against the US dollar since 2005. China is moreover widely criticised for manufacturing large quantities of counterfeit goods – in 2005, the Asia Business Council alleged that the counterfeiting industry accounted for 8% of China's GDP at the time.

The state still dominates in strategic "pillar" industries (such as energy and heavy industries), but private enterprise (composed of around 30 million private businesses) has expanded enormously; in 2005, it accounted for anywhere between 33% to 70% of national GDP, while the OECD estimate for that year was over 50% of China's national output, up from 1% in 1978. Its stock market in Shanghai, the SSE, has raised record amounts of IPOs and its benchmark Shanghai Composite index has doubled since 2005. SSE's market capitalization reached US$3 trillion in 2007, making it the world's fifth-largest stock exchange.

China now ranks 29th in the Global Competitiveness Index, although it is only ranked 135th among the 179 countries measured in the Index of Economic Freedom. 46 Chinese companies made the list in the 2010 Fortune Global 500 (Beijing alone with 30). Measured using market capitalization, four of the world's top ten most valuable companies are Chinese. Some of these include first-ranked PetroChina, third-ranked Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (the world's most valuable bank), fifth-ranked China Mobile (the world's most valuable telecommunications company) and seventh-ranked China Construction Bank.

Although a middle-income country by Western standards, the PRC's rapid growth has pulled hundreds of millions of its people out of poverty since 1978. Today, about 10% of the Chinese population live below the poverty line of US$1 per day (down from 64% in 1978), while life expectancy has increased to 73 years. More than 93% of the population is literate, compared to only 20% in 1950. Urban unemployment in China reportedly declined to 4% by the end of 2007, although true overall unemployment may be as high as 10%.

China's middle-class population (defined as those with annual income of at least US$17,000) has reached more than 100 million as of 2011, while the number of super-rich individuals worth more than 10 million yuan (US$1.5 million) is estimated to be 825,000, according to Hurun Report. Based on the Hurun rich list, the number of US dollar billionaires in China doubled from 130 in 2009 to 271 in 2010, giving China the world's second-highest number of billionaires. China's retail market was worth RMB 8.9 trillion (US$1.302 trillion) in 2007, and is growing at 16.8% annually. China is also now the world's second-largest consumer of luxury goods behind Japan, with 27.5% of the global share.

The PRC's growth has been uneven, with some geographic regions growing faster than others, and a pronounced urban-rural income gap contributing to a national Gini coefficient of 46.9%. Development has been mainly concentrated in the heavily urbanised eastern coastal regions, while the remainder of the country has lagged behind. To counter this, the government has promoted development in the western, northeastern, and central regions of China.

In recent years, China's rapid economic growth has contributed to severe consumer inflation, causing the prices of basic goods to rise steeply. Food prices in China increased by over 21% in the first four months of 2008 alone. To curb inflation and moderate rising property prices, the Chinese government has instituted a number of fiscal regulations and amendments, raising interest rates and imposing limits on bank loans. In September 2011, consumer prices rose by 6.1% compared to a year earlier, marking a reduction in inflation from the peak of 6.5% in July 2011. A side-effect of increased economic regulation was a slowdown in overall growth – China's quarterly GDP growth fell to 9.1% in October 2011, down from 9.5% in the previous quarter.

The Chinese economy is highly energy-intensive and inefficient—on average, industrial processes in China use 20%–100% more energy than similar ones in OECD countries. China became the world's largest energy consumer in 2010, but still relies on coal to supply about 70% of its energy needs. Coupled with lax environmental regulations, this has led to massive water and air pollution, leaving China with 20 of the world's 30 most polluted cities. Consequently, the government has promised to use more renewable energy, planning to make renewables constitute 30% of China's total energy production by 2050. In 2010, China became the largest wind energy provider in the world, with a total installed wind power capacity of 41.8 GW. In January 2011, Russia began scheduled oil shipments to China, pumping 300,000 barrels of oil per day via the Eastern Siberia – Pacific Ocean oil pipeline.

Science and technology

Ancient Chinese inventors were responsible for pioneering a vast number of technologies. These included papermaking, woodblock printing and movable type printing, the early lodestone and needle compass, gunpowder, toilet paper, early seismological detectors, matches, pound locks, the double-action piston pump, blast furnace and cast iron, the iron plough, the multi-tube seed drill, the suspension bridge, natural gas as a fuel, the differential gear for the South Pointing Chariot, the hydraulic-powered armillary sphere and trip hammer, the mechanical chain drive and belt drive, the raised-relief map, the propeller, the crossbow, the cannon, and the multistage rocket.

Chinese astronomers were among the first to record observations of a supernova. Chinese mathematics evolved independently of Greek mathematics and is therefore of great interest in the history of mathematics. Moreover, the Chinese were keen on documenting all of their technological achievements, such as in the ''Tiangong Kaiwu'' encyclopedia written by Song Yingxing (1587–1666).

Despite its earlier sophistication, China's grasp of science and technology had fallen behind that of Europe by the 17th century. Political, social and cultural reasons have been given for this, although recent historians focus more on economic causes, such as the high level equilibrium trap. Since the beginning of Deng Xiaoping's market reforms, China has grown increasingly connected to the global economy and information sphere, and the government has placed a heavy emphasis on the development of science and technology.

After the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s and '70s, China started to develop its own nuclear weapons and delivery systems, successfully detonating its first surface nuclear test in 1964 at Lop Nur. A natural outgrowth of this was a satellite launching program, which culminated in 1970 with the launching of Dong Fang Hong I, the first Chinese satellite. This made the PRC the fifth nation to independently launch a satellite. China has the world's second-largest research and development budget, and invested over $136 billion in science and technology in 2006, an increase of more than 20% over 2005. Stem cell research and gene therapy, which some in the Western world see as controversial, face minimal regulation in China. China has an estimated 926,000 researchers, second only to the 1.3 million in the United States. Through domestic development and foreign partnerships, China has significantly increased the sophistication of its transport network in recent decades, becoming a world leader in high-speed rail technology.

In 1992, the Shenzhou manned spaceflight program was authorized. After four unmanned tests, ''Shenzhou 5'' was launched on 15 October 2003, using a Long March 2F launch vehicle and carrying Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei, making the PRC the third country to put a human being into space through its own endeavors. In 2008, China successfully completed the ''Shenzhou 7'' mission, making it the third country to have the capability to conduct a spacewalk. China maintains an active lunar exploration program – it successfully launched the Chang'e 1 and Chang'e 2 lunar survey probes in 2007 and 2011 respectively, and is planning to launch a lunar rover in 2013, as a precursor to a possible manned lunar landing in the 2020s. In September 2011, the first Chinese space station module, Tiangong-1, was successfully launched, marking the first step in a decade-long project to construct a large manned space station. China is furthermore considering a manned mission to Mars, and made its first attempt at the robotic exploration of Mars in November 2011.

China is also actively developing its software, semiconductor and energy industries, including renewable energies such as hydroelectric, wind and solar power. In an effort to reduce pollution from coal-burning power plants, China has been pioneering the deployment of pebble bed nuclear reactors, which run cooler and safer than conventional nuclear reactors, and have potential applications for the development of a hydrogen economy. In 2010, China developed Tianhe-IA, for a time the world's fastest supercomputer, at the National Supercomputing Center of Tianjin. China is also rapidly advancing in the field of robotics, and is predicted to have the world's fifth-largest industrial robot workforce by 2014.

Infrastructure

Communications

China currently has the most cellphone users of any country in the world, with over 800 million users as of July 2010. It also has the world's largest number of internet and broadband users. By December 2010, China had around 457 million internet users, an increase of 19% over the previous year, and by the end of 2011 the number of internet users had exceeded 500 million. According to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), China's average internet connection speed is 100.9 kbit/s, less than half of the global average of 212.5 kbit/s.

China Telecom and China Unicom, the country's two largest broadband providers, accounted for 20% of global broadband subscribers, whereas the world's ten largest broadband service providers combined accounted for 39% of the world's broadband customers. China Telecom alone serves 55 million broadband subscribers, while China Unicom serves more than 40 million. The massive rise in internet use in China continues to fuel rapid broadband growth, whereas the world's other major broadband ISPs operate in the mature markets of the developed world, with high levels of broadband penetration and rapidly slowing subscriber growth.

Transport

Transportation in mainland China has been prioritised by the government in recent decades, and has undergone intense state-led development since the late 1990s. The national road network has been massively expanded through the creation of a network of expressways, known as the National Trunk Highway System (NTHS). By 2011, China's expressways had reached a total length of , second only to the road network of the United States.

China also possesses the world’s longest high-speed rail network, with over of service routes. Of these, serve trains with top speeds of . In 2011, China unveiled a prototype train capable of reaching speeds of , the first ultra-high-speed train developed solely by its domestic railway industry.

Private car ownership is growing rapidly, with China surpassing the United States as the largest automobile market in the world in 2009, with total car sales of over 13.6 million.

Domestic air travel has also increased significantly, but remains too expensive for most. Long-distance transportation is dominated by railways and charter bus systems. Railways are the vital carrier in China; they are monopolized by the state, divided into various railway bureaux in different regions. Due to huge demand, the system is regularly subject to overcrowding, particularly during holiday seasons, such as ''Chunyun'' during the Chinese New Year.

Rapid transit systems are also rapidly developing in China's major cities, in the form of networks of underground or light rail systems. Hong Kong has one of the most developed transport systems in the world, while Shanghai has a high-speed maglev rail line connecting the city to its main international airport, Pudong International Airport.

Demographics

As of July 2010, the People's Republic of China has an estimated total population of 1,338,612,968. About 21% of the population (145,461,833 males; 128,445,739 females) are 14 years old or younger, 71% (482,439,115 males; 455,960,489 females) are between 15 and 64 years old, and 8% (48,562,635 males; 53,103,902 females) are over 65 years old. The population growth rate for 2006 was 0.6%.

By end of 2010, the proportion of mainland Chinese people aged 14 or younger was 16.60%, while the number aged 60 or older grew to 13.26%, giving a total proportion of 29.86% dependents. The proportion of the population of workable age was thus around 70%.

With a population of over 1.3 billion and dwindling natural resources, the PRC is very concerned about its population growth and has attempted, with mixed results, to implement a strict family planning policy. The government's goal is one child per family, with exceptions for ethnic minorities and a degree of flexibility in rural areas. It is hoped that population growth in China will stabilize in the early decades of the 21st century, though some projections estimate a population of anywhere between 1.4 billion and 1.6 billion by 2025. China's family planning minister has indicated that the one-child policy will be maintained until at least 2020.

The one-child policy is resisted, particularly in rural areas, because of the need for agricultural labour and a traditional preference for boys (who can later serve as male heirs). Families who breach the policy often lie during the census. Official government policy opposes forced sterilization or abortion, but allegations of coercion continue as local officials, who are faced with penalties for failing to curb population growth, may resort to forcible measures, or manipulation of census figures.

The decreasing reliability of PRC population statistics since family planning began in the late 1970s has made evaluating the effectiveness of the policy difficult. Data from the 2010 census implies that the total fertility rate may now be around 1.4. The government is particularly concerned with the large imbalance in the sex ratio at birth, apparently the result of a combination of traditional preference for boys and family planning pressure, which led to a ban on using ultrasound devices in an attempt to prevent sex-selective abortion.

According to the 2010 census, there were 118.06 boys born for every 100 girls, which is 0.53 points lower than the ratio obtained from a population sample survey carried out in 2005. However, the gender ratio of 118.06 is still beyond the normal range of around 105 percent, and experts warn of increased social instability should this trend continue. For the population born between the years 1900 and 2000, it is estimated that there could be 35.59 million fewer females than males. Other demographers argue that perceived gender imbalances may arise from the underreporting of female births. A recent study suggests that as many as three million Chinese babies are hidden by their parents every year. According to the 2010 census, males accounted for 51.27 percent of the total population, while females made up 48.73 percent of the total.

Ethnic groups

|- |Han||91.59% |- |Zhuang||1.28% |- |Manchu||0.84% |- |Hui||0.78% |- |Miao||0.71% |- |Uyghur||0.66% |- |Tujia||0.63% |- |Other||3.51% |} The PRC officially recognizes 56 distinct ethnic groups, the largest of which are the Han Chinese, who constitute about 91.51% of the total population. The Han Chinese outnumber the minority groups in every province, municipality and autonomous region except Tibet and Xinjiang, and are descended from ancient Huaxia tribes living along the Yellow River.

Ethnic minorities account for about 8.49% of the population of China, according to the 2010 census. Compared with the 2000 population census, the Han population increased by 66,537,177 persons, or 5.74%, while the population of the 55 national minorities combined increased by 7,362,627 persons, or 6.92%.

The 2010 census recorded a total of 593,832 foreign citizens living in China. The largest such groups were from South Korea (120,750), the United States (71,493) and Japan (66,159).

Languages

The languages most spoken in China belong to the Sino-Tibetan language family. There are also several major linguistic groups within the Chinese language itself. The most spoken varieties are Mandarin (spoken by over 70% of the population), Wu (includes Shanghainese), Yue (includes Cantonese and Taishanese), Min (includes Hokkien and Teochew), Xiang, Gan, and Hakka. Non-Sinitic languages spoken widely by ethnic minorities include Zhuang, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur, Hmong and Korean. Standard Mandarin, a variety of Mandarin based on the Beijing dialect, is the official national language of China and is used as a lingua franca between people of different linguistic backgrounds.

Classical Chinese was the written standard in China for thousands of years, and allowed for written communication between speakers of various unintelligible languages and dialects in China. Written vernacular Chinese, or ''baihua'', is the written standard based on the Mandarin dialect and first popularized in Ming Dynasty novels. It was adopted with significant modifications during the early 20th century as the national standard. Classical Chinese is still part of the high school curriculum and is thus intelligible to some degree to many Chinese. Since its promulgation by the government in 1956, Simplified Chinese characters have become the official standardized written script used to write the Chinese language within mainland China, supplanting the use of Traditional Chinese characters used earlier there.

Urbanization

Since 2000, China's cities have expanded at an average rate of 10% annually. It is estimated that China will add 400 million people to its urban population, accounting for 64% of the total population, by 2025. The country's urbanization rate increased from 17.4% to 46.8% between 1978 and 2009, a scale unprecedented in human history. Between 150 and 200 million migrant workers work part-time in the major cities, returning home to the countryside periodically with their earnings.

Today, the People's Republic of China has dozens of cities with one million or more long-term residents, including the three global cities of Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. The figures in the table below are from the 2008 census, and are only estimates of the urban populations within administrative city limits; a different ranking exists when considering the total municipal populations (which includes suburban and rural populations). The large "floating populations" of migrant workers make conducting censuses in urban areas difficult; the figures below do not include the floating population, only long-term residents.

Education

In 1986, China set the long-term goal of providing compulsory nine-year basic education to every child. As of 2007, there were 396,567 primary schools, 94,116 secondary schools, and 2,236 higher education institutions in the PRC. In February 2006, the government advanced its basic education goal by pledging to provide completely free nine-year education, including textbooks and fees. Free compulsory education in China consists of elementary school and middle school, which lasts for 9 years (ages 6–15); almost all children in urban areas continue with three years of high school.

, 93.3% of the population over age 15 are literate. In 2000, China's literacy rate among 15-to-24-year-olds was 98.9% (99.2% for males and 98.5% for females). In March 2007, the Chinese government declared education a national "strategic priority"; the central budget for national scholarships was tripled between 2007 and 2009, and 223.5 billion yuan (US$28.65 billion) of extra state funding was allocated between 2007 and 2012 to improve compulsory education in rural areas.

In 2009, Chinese students from Shanghai achieved the world's best results in mathematics, science and literacy, as tested by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a worldwide evaluation of 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance.

The quality of Chinese colleges and universities varies considerably across the country. The consistently top-ranked universities in mainland China are:

Beijing: Peking University, Tsinghua University, Renmin University of China, Beijing Normal University

Shanghai: Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tongji University, East China Normal University

Harbin: Harbin Institute of Technology

Tianjin: Nankai University, Tianjin University

Xi'an: Xi'an Jiaotong University

Nanjing: Nanjing University

Hefei: University of Science and Technology of China

Hangzhou: Zhejiang University

Wuhan: Wuhan University

Guangzhou: Sun Yat-sen University (aka Zhongshan University)

Health

The Ministry of Health, together with its counterparts in the provincial health bureaux, oversees the health needs of the Chinese population. An emphasis on public health and preventive medicine has characterized health policy since the early 1950s. At that time, the Communist Party started the Patriotic Health Campaign, which was aimed at improving sanitation and hygiene, as well as treating and preventing several diseases. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid and scarlet fever, which were previously rife in China, were nearly eradicated by the campaign.

After Deng Xiaoping began instituting economic reforms in 1978, the health of the Chinese public improved rapidly due to better nutrition, although many of the free public health services provided in the countryside disappeared along with the People's Communes. Healthcare in China became mostly privatised, and experienced a significant rise in quality. The national life expectancy at birth rose from about 35 years in 1949 to 73.18 years in 2008, and infant mortality decreased from 300 per thousand in the 1950s to around 23 per thousand in 2006. Malnutrition stood at 12% of the population, according to United Nations FAO sources.

Despite significant improvements in health and the construction of advanced Western-style medical facilities, China has several emerging public health problems, such as respiratory illnesses caused by widespread air pollution and hundreds of millions of cigarette smokers, a possible future HIV/AIDS epidemic, and an increase in obesity among urban youths. China's large population and densely populated cities have led to serious disease outbreaks in recent years, such as the 2003 outbreak of SARS, although this has since been largely contained.

Estimates of excess deaths in China from environmental pollution (apart from smoking) are placed at 760,000 people per annum from air and water pollution (including indoor air pollution). In 2007, China overtook the United States as the world's biggest producer of carbon dioxide. Some 90% of China's cities suffer from some degree of water pollution, and nearly 500 million people lacked access to safe drinking water in 2005. Reports by the World Bank and the ''New York Times'' have claimed industrial pollution, particularly of the air, to be a significant health hazard in China.

Religion

In mainland China, the government allows a degree of religious freedom to members of state-approved religious organizations. An accurate number of religious adherents is hard to obtain because of a lack of official data, but there is general consensus that religion has been enjoying a resurgence over the past 20 years. A 1998 survey by Adherents.com found that 59% (over 700 million) of the population was irreligious. A later survey, conducted in 2007, found that there are 300 million believers in China, constituting 23% of the population, as distinct from an official figure of 100 million.

Despite the surveys' varying results, most agree that China's traditional religions—Buddhism, Taoism, and Chinese folk religions—are the dominant faiths. According to various sources, Buddhism in China accounts for between 660 million (~50% of the population) and over 1 billion (~80%), while Taoists number 400 million (~30%). However, because of the fact that one person may subscribe to two or more of these traditional beliefs simultaneously and the difficulty in clearly differentiating Buddhism, Taoism, and Chinese folk religions, the number of adherents to these religions can be overlaid. In addition, subscribing to Buddhism and Taoism is not necessarily considered religious by those who follow the philosophies in principle but stop short of believing in any kind of deity or divinity.

Most Chinese Buddhists are merely nominal adherents, because only a small proportion of the population (around 8% or 100 million) may have taken the formal step of going for refuge. Even then, it is still difficult to estimate accurately the number of Buddhists because they do not have congregational memberships and often do not participate in public ceremonies. Mahayana (大乘, ''Dacheng'') and its subsets Pure Land (Amidism), Tiantai and Chán (better known in the west by its Japanese pronunciation Zen) are the most widely practiced denominations of Buddhism. Other forms, such as Theravada and Tibetan, are practiced largely by ethnic minorities along the geographic fringes of the Chinese mainland.

Christianity was first introduced to China during the Tang Dynasty, with the arrival of Nestorian Christianity in 635 AD. This was followed by Franciscan missionaries in the 13th century, Jesuits in the 16th century, and finally Protestants in the 19th century. Of China's minority religions, Christianity is one of the fastest-growing. The total number of Christians is difficult to determine, as many belong to unauthorized house churches, but estimates of their number have ranged from 40 million (3% of the total population) to 54 million (4%) to as many as 130 million (10%). Official government statistics put the number of Christians at 16 million, but these count only members of officially sanctioned church bodies. China is believed to now have the world's second-largest evangelical Christian population—behind only the United States—and if current growth rates continue, China will become a global center of evangelical Christianity in coming decades.

Islam in China dates to a mission in 651, only 18 years after Muhammad's death. Muslims came to China for trade, becoming prominent in the trading ports of the Song Dynasty. They became influential in government circles, including Zheng He, Lan Yu and Yeheidie'erding. Nanjing became an important center of Islamic study. Statistics are hard to find, and most estimates give a figure of between 20 and 30 million Muslims (1.5% to 2% of the population).

China also plays host to numerous minority religions, including Hinduism, Dongbaism, Bön, and a number of more modern religions and sects (particularly Xiantianism). In July 1999, the Falun Gong spiritual practice was officially banned by the authorities, and many international organizations have criticized the government's treatment of Falun Gong that has occurred since then. There are no reliable estimates of the number of Falun Gong practitioners in China, although informal estimates have given figures as high as 70 million.

Culture

Since ancient times, Chinese culture has been heavily influenced by Confucianism and conservative philosophies. For centuries, opportunities for social advancement could be provided by high performance in the prestigious Imperial examinations, which were instituted in 605 AD to help the Emperor select skilful bureaucrats. The literary emphasis of the exams affected the general perception of cultural refinement in China, such as the belief that calligraphy and literati painting were higher forms of art than dancing or drama.

A number of more authoritarian and rational strains of thought were also influential, with Legalism being a prominent example. There was often conflict between the philosophies – for instance, the individualistic Song Dynasty neo-Confucians believed that Legalism departed from the original spirit of Confucianism. Examinations and a culture of merit remain greatly valued in China today. In recent years, a number of New Confucians have claimed that modern democratic ideals and human rights are compatible with traditional Confucian values.

The first leaders of the People's Republic of China were born into the traditional imperial order, but were influenced by the May Fourth Movement and reformist ideals. They sought to change some traditional aspects of Chinese culture, such as rural land tenure, sexism, and the Confucian system of education, while preserving others, such as the family structure and culture of obedience to the state.

Some observers see the period following the establishment of the PRC in 1949 as a continuation of traditional Chinese dynastic history, while others claim that the Communist Party's rule has damaged the foundations of Chinese culture, especially through political movements such as the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, where many aspects of traditional culture were destroyed, having been denounced as 'regressive and harmful' or 'vestiges of feudalism'. Many important aspects of traditional Chinese morals and culture, such as Confucianism, Chinese art, literature, and performing arts like Peking opera, were altered to conform to government policies and propaganda at the time.

Today, the Chinese government has accepted numerous elements of traditional Chinese culture as being integral to Chinese society. With the rise of Chinese nationalism and the end of the Cultural Revolution, various forms of traditional Chinese art, literature, music, film, fashion and architecture have seen a vigorous revival, and folk and variety art in particular have sparked interest nationally and even worldwide.

Prior to the beginning of maritime Sino-European trade in the 16th century, medieval China and the European West were linked by the Silk Road, which was a key route of cultural as well as economic exchange. Artifacts from the history of the Road, as well as from the natural history of the Gobi desert, are displayed in the Silk Route Museum in Jiuquan.

Cuisine

Chinese cuisine is highly diverse, drawing on several millennia of culinary history. The dynastic emperors of ancient China were known to host banquets with over 100 dishes served at a time, employing countless imperial kitchen staff and concubines to prepare the food. Such royal dishes gradually became a part of wider Chinese culture. China's staple food is rice, but the country is also well known for its meat dishes. Spices are endemic to Chinese cuisine.

Numerous foreign offshoots of Chinese food, such as Hong Kong cuisine and American Chinese food, have emerged in the various nations which play host to the Chinese diaspora.

Sports

China has one of the oldest sporting cultures in the world. There is evidence that a form of association football was played in China around 1000 AD. Besides football, some of the most popular sports in the country include martial arts, table tennis, badminton, swimming, basketball and snooker. Board games such as go (''weiqi''), xiangqi, and more recently chess, are also played at a professional level.

Physical fitness is widely emphasized in Chinese culture. Morning exercises are a common activity, with elderly citizens encouraged to practice qigong and t'ai chi ch'uan. Young people in China are also keen on basketball, especially in urban centers with limited space and grass areas. The American National Basketball Association has a huge following among Chinese youths, with Chinese players such as Yao Ming being held in high esteem.

Many more traditional sports are also played in China. Dragon boat racing occurs during the annual nationwide Dragon Boat Festival, and has since gained popularity abroad. In Inner Mongolia, sports such as Mongolian-style wrestling and horse racing are popular. In Tibet, archery and equestrianism are a part of traditional festivals.

China has participated at the Olympic Games since 1932, although it has only participated as the PRC since 1952. China hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, and received 51 gold medals – the highest number of gold medals of any participating nation that year. China will host the 2013 East Asian Games in Tianjin and the 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing.

See also

International rankings of the People's Republic of China

References

Further reading

Farah, Paolo, ''Five Years of China’s WTO Membership. EU and US Perspectives on China’s Compliance with Transparency Commitments and the Transitional Review Mechanism'', Legal Issues of Economic Integration, Kluwer Law International, Volume 33, Number 3, pp. 263–304, 2006. Abstract.

Heilig, Gerhard K., ''China Bibliography – Online.'' 2006, 2007.

External links

Overviews

China at a Glance ''People's Daily''

BBC News – ''Country Profile: China''

Modern China: A Primer—slideshow by ''Life'' magazine

"Rethinking ‘Capitalist Restoration’ in China" by Yiching Wu

Key Development Forecasts for China from International Futures

Documentaries

"China on the Rise" PBS Online NewsHour. October 2005.

''China in the Red'', 1998–2001. PBS Frontline.

''China From the Inside'' A documentary series co-produced by KQED Public Television and Granada Television.

Government The Central People's Government of People's Republic of China China Internet Information Center —Authorized government portal site to China

Studies

Assertive Pragmatism: China's Economic Rise and Its Impact on Chinese Foreign Policy Minxin Pei, IFRI Proliferation Papers n°15, 2006

The Dragon's Dawn: China as a Rising Imperial Power 11 February 2005.

History of The People's Republic of China Timeline of Key Events since 1949.

Media, advertising, and urban life in China.

Travel

Maps

Google Maps—China

Google Maps—China—Interesting locations

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Name	Herbie Hancock
Landscape	yes
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Birth name	Herbert Jeffrey Hancock
Alias	Herbie Hancock
Born	April 12, 1940Chicago, IllinoisUnited States
Instrument	piano, synthesizer, organ, clavinet, keytar, vocoder
Genre	Jazz, bebop, post bop, jazz fusion, hard bop, jazz-funk, funk, R&B;, electro funk, classical
Occupation	Musician, composer, bandleader
Years active	1961–present
Label	Columbia, Blue Note, Verve, Warner Bros. Records
Associated acts	Miles Davis Quintet, Jaco Pastorius, Stevie Wonder
Website	Official website of Herbie Hancock }}

Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock (b. April 12, 1940) is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound. He was one of the first jazz musicians to embrace music synthesizers and funk music (characterized by syncopated drum beats). Hancock's music is often melodic and accessible; he has had many songs "cross over" and achieved success among pop audiences. His music embraces elements of funk and soul while adopting freer stylistic elements from jazz. In his jazz improvisation, he possesses a unique creative blend of jazz, blues, and modern classical music, with harmonic stylings much like the styles of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.

Hancock's best-known solo works include "Cantaloupe Island", "Watermelon Man" (later performed by dozens of musicians, including bandleader Mongo Santamaría), "Maiden Voyage", "Chameleon", and the singles "I Thought It Was You" and "Rockit". His 2007 tribute album ''River: The Joni Letters'' won the 2008 Grammy Award for Album of the Year, only the second jazz album ever to win the award after Getz/Gilberto in 1965.

As a member of Soka Gakkai, Hancock is an adherent of the Nichiren school of Mahayana Buddhism.

On 22 July 2011 at a ceremony in Paris, Hancock was named UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for the promotion of Intercultural Dialogue.

Early life and career

Hancock was born in Chicago, Illinois. Like many jazz pianists, Hancock started with a classical music education. He studied from age seven, and his talent was recognized early. Considered a child prodigy, he played the first movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 5 at a young people's concert with the Chicago Symphony at age eleven.

Through his teens, Hancock never had a jazz teacher, but developed his ear and sense of harmony. He was also influenced by records of the vocal group the Hi-Lo's:

..by the time I actually heard the Hi-Lo's, I started picking that stuff out; my ear was happening. I could hear stuff and that's when I really learned some much farther-out voicings -like the harmonies I used on 'Speak Like a Child' -just being able to do that. I really got that from Clare Fischer's arrangements for the Hi-Lo's. Clare Fischer was a major influence on my harmonic concept... He and Bill Evans, and Ravel and Gil Evans, finally. You know, that's where it music after two years.

In 1960, he heard Chris Anderson play just once, and begged him to accept him as a student. Hancock often mentions Anderson as his harmonic guru. Hancock left Grinnell College, moved to Chicago and began working with Donald Byrd and Coleman Hawkins, during which period he also took courses at Roosevelt University. (He later graduated from Grinnell, which also awarded him an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree in 1972). Donald Byrd was attending the Manhattan School of Music in New York at the time and suggested that Hancock study composition with Vittorio Giannini, which he did for a short time in 1960. The pianist quickly earned a reputation, and played subsequent sessions with Oliver Nelson and Phil Woods. He recorded his first solo album ''Takin' Off'' for Blue Note Records in 1962. "Watermelon Man" (from ''Takin' Off'') was to provide Mongo Santamaría with a hit single, but more importantly for Hancock, ''Takin' Off'' caught the attention of Miles Davis, who was at that time assembling a new band. Hancock was introduced to Davis by the young drummer Tony Williams, a member of the new band.

Miles Davis quintet and Blue Note

Hancock received considerable attention when, in May 1963, he joined Miles Davis's "second great quintet." This new band was essentially Miles Davis surrounded by fresh, new talent. Davis personally sought out Hancock, whom he saw as one of the most promising talents in jazz. The rhythm section Davis organized was young but effective, comprising bassist Ron Carter, 17-year-old drummer Tony Williams, and Hancock on piano. After George Coleman and Sam Rivers each took a turn at the saxophone spot, the quintet would gel with Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone. This quintet is often regarded as one of the finest jazz ensembles, and the rhythm section has been especially praised for its innovation and flexibility.

The second great quintet was where Hancock found his own voice as a pianist. Not only did he find new ways to use common chords, but he also popularized chords that had not previously been used in jazz. Hancock also developed a unique taste for "orchestral" accompaniment – using quartal harmony and Debussy-like harmonies, with stark contrasts then unheard of in jazz. With Williams and Carter he wove a labyrinth of rhythmic intricacy on, around and over existing melodic and chordal schemes. In the later half of the sixties their approach became so sophisticated and unorthodox that conventional chord changes would hardly be discernible; hence their improvisational concept would become known as "Time, No Changes".

While in the Davis' band, Hancock also found time to record dozens of sessions for the Blue Note label, both under his own name and as a sideman with other musicians such as Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Grant Green, Bobby Hutcherson, Sam Rivers, Donald Byrd, Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard.

His albums ''Empyrean Isles'' (1964) and ''Maiden Voyage'' (1965) were to be two of the most famous and influential jazz LPs of the sixties, winning praise for both their innovation and accessibility (the latter demonstrated by the subsequent enormous popularity of the ''Maiden Voyage'' title track as a jazz standard, and by the jazz rap group US3 having a hit single with "Cantaloop" (derived from "Cantaloupe Island" on ''Empyrean Isles'') some twenty five years later). ''Empyrean Isles'' featured the Davis rhythm section of Hancock, Carter and Williams with the addition of Freddie Hubbard on cornet, while ''Maiden Voyage'' also added former Davis saxophonist George Coleman (with Hubbard remaining on trumpet). Both albums are regarded as among the principal foundations of the post-bop style. Hancock also recorded several less-well-known but still critically acclaimed albums with larger ensembles – ''My Point of View'' (1963), ''Speak Like a Child'' (1968) and ''The Prisoner'' (1969) featured flugelhorn, alto flute and bass trombone. 1963's ''Inventions and Dimensions'' was an album of almost entirely improvised music, teaming Hancock with bassist Paul Chambers and two Latin percussionists, Willie Bobo and Osvaldo Martinez.

During this period, Hancock also composed the score to Michelangelo Antonioni's film ''Blowup'', the first of many soundtracks he recorded in his career.

Davis had begun incorporating elements of rock and popular music into his recordings by the end of Hancock's tenure with the band. Despite some initial reluctance, Hancock began doubling on electric keyboards including the Fender Rhodes electric piano at Davis's insistence. Hancock adapted quickly to the new instruments, which proved to be instrumental in his future artistic endeavors.

Under the pretext that he had returned late from a honeymoon in Brazil, Hancock was dismissed from Davis's band. In the summer of 1968 Hancock formed his own sextet. However, although Davis soon disbanded his quintet to search for a new sound, Hancock, despite his departure from the working band, continued to appear on Miles Davis records for the next few years. Noteworthy appearances include ''In a Silent Way'', ''A Tribute to Jack Johnson'' and ''On the Corner''.

''Fat Albert'' and ''Mwandishi''

Hancock left Blue Note in 1969, signing up with Warner Bros. Records. In 1969, Hancock composed the soundtrack for the Bill Cosby animated children's television show ''Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids''. Titled ''Fat Albert Rotunda'', the album was mainly an R&B;-influenced album with strong jazz overtones. One of the jazzier songs on the record, "Tell Me A Bedtime Story", was later re-worked as a more electronic sounding song for the Quincy Jones album, ''Sounds...and Stuff Like That''.

Hancock became fascinated with accumulating musical gadgets and toys. Together with the profound influence of Davis's ''Bitches Brew'', this fascination would culminate in a series of albums in which electronic instruments are coupled with acoustic instruments.

Hancock's first ventures into electronic music started with a sextet comprising Hancock, bassist Buster Williams and drummer Billy Hart, and a trio of horn players: Eddie Henderson (trumpet), Julian Priester (trombone), and multireedist Bennie Maupin. Dr. Patrick Gleeson was eventually added to the mix to play and program the synthesizers. In fact, Hancock was one of the first jazz pianists to completely embrace electronic keyboards.

The sextet, later a septet with the addition of Gleeson, made three experimental albums under Hancock's name: ''Mwandishi'' (1971), ''Crossings'' (1972) (both on Warner Bros. Records), and ''Sextant'' (1973) (released on Columbia Records); two more, '' Realization'' and ''Inside Out'', were recorded under Henderson's name with essentially the same personnel. The music often had very free improvisations and showed influence from the electronic music of some contemporary classical composers.

Synthesizer player Patrick Gleeson, one of the first musicians to play synthesizer on any jazz recording, introduced the instrument on ''Crossings'', released in 1972, one of a handful of influential electronic jazz/fusion recordings to feature synthesizer that same year. On ''Crossings'' (as well as on ''I Sing the Body Electric''), the synthesizer is used more as an improvisatory global orchestration device than as a strictly melodic instrument. This reflected Gleeson's (and Powell's) interest in contemporary European electronic music techniques and in the West Coast synthesis techniques of Morton Subotnick and other contemporaries, several of whom were resident at one time or another, as was Gleeson, at The Mills College Tape Music Center. An early review of ''Crossings'' in Downbeat magazine complained about the synthesizer, but a few years later the magazine noted in a cover story on Gleeson that he was "a pioneer" in the field of electronics in jazz. Gleeson used a modular Moog III for the recording of the album, but used an ARP 2600 synthesizer, and occasionally an ARP Soloist for the group's live performances. On ''Sextant'' Gleeson used the more compact ARP synthesizers instead of the larger Moog III for both studio and live performances. In the albums following ''The Crossings'', Hancock started to play synth himself and unlike Gleeson, he plays it as a melodical and rhythm instrument just like electric pianos.

Hancock's three records released in 1971–1973, became later known as the "Mwandishi" albums, so-called after a Swahili name Hancock sometimes used during this era (''Mwandishi'' is Swahili for ''writer''). The first two, including ''Fat Albert Rotunda'' were made available on the 2-CD set ''Mwandishi: the Complete Warner Bros. Recordings'', released in 1994, but are now sold as individual CD editions. Of the three electronic albums, ''Sextant'' is probably the most experimental since the Arp synthesizers are used extensively, and some advanced improvisation ("post-modal free impressionism") is found on the tracks "Hornets" and "Hidden Shadows" (which is in the meter 19/4). "Hornets" was later revised on the 2001 album ''Future2Future'' as "Virtual Hornets".

Among the instruments Hancock and Gleeson used were Fender Rhodes piano, ARP Odyssey, ARP 2600, ARP Pro Soloist Synthesizer, a Mellotron and the Moog synthesizer III.

All three Warner Bros. albums ''Fat Albert Rotunda'', ''Mwandishi'', and ''Crossings'', were remastered in 2001 and released in Europe but were not released in the U.S.A. as of June 2005. In the Winter of 2006–2007 a remastered edition of Crossings was announced and scheduled for release in the Spring.

Headhunters and Death Wish

After the sometimes "airy" and decidedly experimental "Mwandishi" albums, Hancock was eager to perform more "earthy" and "funky" music. The ''Mwandishi'' albums – though these days seen as respected early fusion recordings – had seen mixed reviews and poor sales, so it is probable that Hancock was motivated by financial concerns as well as artistic restlessness. Hancock was also bothered by the fact that many people did not understand avant-garde music. He explained that he loved funk music, especially Sly Stone's music, so he wanted to try to make funk himself.

He gathered a new band, which he called The Headhunters, keeping only Maupin from the sextet and adding bassist Paul Jackson, percussionist Bill Summers, and drummer Harvey Mason. The album ''Head Hunters'', released in 1973, was a major hit and crossed over to pop audiences, though it prompted criticism from some jazz fans. Head Hunters was recorded at Different Fur studios.

Despite charges of "selling out", Stephen Erlewine of ''Allmusic'' positively reviewed the album amongst other friendly critics, saying, "''Head Hunters'' still sounds fresh and vital three decades after its initial release, and its genre-bending proved vastly influential on not only jazz, but funk, soul, and hip-hop."

Mason was replaced by Mike Clark, and the band released a second album, ''Thrust'', the following year. (A live album from a Japan performance, consisting of compositions from those first two ''Head Hunters'' releases was released in 1975 as ''Flood''. The record has since been released on CD in Japan.) This was almost as well-received as its predecessor, if not attaining the same level of commercial success. The Headhunters made another successful album (called ''Survival of the Fittest'') without Hancock, while Hancock himself started to make even more commercial albums, often featuring members of the band, but no longer billed as The Headhunters. The Headhunters reunited with Hancock in 1998 for ''Return of the Headhunters'', and a version of the band (featuring Jackson and Clark) continues to play live and record.

In 1973, Hancock composed his second masterful soundtrack to the controversial film ''The Spook Who Sat By The Door''. Then in 1974, Hancock also composed the soundtrack to the first ''Death Wish'' film. One of his memorable songs, "Joanna's Theme", would later be re-recorded in 1997 on his duet album with Wayne Shorter ''1 + 1''.

Hancock's next jazz-funk albums of the 1970s were ''Man-Child'' (1975), and ''Secrets'' (1976), which point toward the more commercial direction Hancock would take over the next decade. These albums feature the members of the 'Headhunters' band, but also a variety of other musicians in important roles.

Back to the Basics: VSOP and the Future Shock

During late 1970s and early 1980s, Hancock toured with his "V.S.O.P." quintet, which featured all the members of the 1960s Miles Davis quintet except Davis, who was replaced by trumpet giant Freddie Hubbard. There was constant speculation that one day Davis would reunite with his classic band, but he never did so. VSOP recorded several live albums in the late 1970s, including ''VSOP'' (1976), and ''VSOP: The Quintet'' (1977).

In 1978, Hancock recorded a duet with Chick Corea, who had replaced him in the Miles Davis band a decade earlier. He also released a solo acoustic piano album titled ''The Piano'' (1978), which, like so many Hancock albums at the time, was initially released only in Japan. (It was finally released in the US in 2004.) Several other Japan-only releases have yet to surface in the US, such as ''Dedication'' (1974), ''VSOP: Tempest in the Colosseum'' (1977), and ''Direct Step'' (1978). ''Live Under the Sky'' was a VSOP album remastered for the US in 2004, and included an entire second concert from the July 1979 tour.

From 1978–1982, Hancock recorded many albums consisting of jazz-inflected disco and pop music, beginning with ''Sunlight'' (featuring guest musicians like Tony Williams and Jaco Pastorius on the last track) (1978). Singing through a vocoder, he earned a British hit, "I Thought It Was You", although critics were unimpressed. This led to more vocoder on the 1979 follow-up, ''Feets, Don't Fail Me Now'', which gave him another UK hit in "You Bet Your Love". The video won five different categories at the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards. This single ushered in a collaboration with noted bassist and producer Bill Laswell. Hancock experimented with electronic music on a string of three LPs produced by Laswell: ''Future Shock'' (1983), ''Sound-System'' (1984) and ''Perfect Machine'' (1988). Despite the success of "Rockit", Hancock's trio of Laswell-produced albums (particularly the latter two) are among the most critically derided of his entire career, perhaps even more so than his erstwhile pop-jazz experiments. Hancock's level of actual contribution to these albums was also questioned, with some critics contending that the Laswell albums should have been labelled "Bill Laswell featuring Herbie Hancock".

During this period, he appeared onstage at the Grammy awards with Stevie Wonder, Howard Jones, and Thomas Dolby, in a famous synthesizer jam (The video on Youtube can be found here.). Lesser known works from the 80s are the live album ''Jazz Africa'' and the studio album ''Village Life'' (1984) which were recorded with Gambian kora player Foday Musa Suso. Also, in 1985 he performed as a guest on the album So Red The Rose by the Duran Duran shoot off group Arcadia. He also provided introductory and closing comments for the PBS rebroadcast in the United States of the BBC educational series from the mid-1980s, ''Rockschool'' (not to be confused with the most recent ''Gene Simmons' Rock School'' series).

In 1986, Hancock performed and acted in the film '''Round Midnight''. He also wrote the score/soundtrack, for which he won an Academy Award for Original Music Score. Often he would write music for TV commercials. "Maiden Voyage", in fact, started out as a cologne advertisement. At the end of the ''Perfect Machine'' tour, Hancock decided to leave Columbia Records after a 15-plus-year relationship.

As of June 2005, almost half of his Columbia recordings have been remastered. The first three US releases, ''Sextant'', ''Head Hunters'' and ''Thrust'' as well as the last four releases ''Future Shock'', ''Sound-System'', the soundtrack to ''Round Midnight'' and ''Perfect Machine''. Everything released in America from ''Man-Child'' to ''Quartet'' has yet to be remastered. Some albums, made and initially released in the US, were remastered between 1999 and 2001 in other countries such as ''Magic Windows'' and ''Monster''. Hancock also re-released some of his Japan-only releases in the West, such as ''The Piano.''

1990s and later

After leaving Columbia, Hancock took a break. Then, with friends Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter, and Davis admirer Wallace Roney, they recorded ''A Tribute to Miles'' which was released in 1994. The album contained two live recordings and studio recording classics with Roney playing Davis's part as trumpet player. The album won a Grammy for best group album. He also toured with Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland and Pat Metheny in 1990 on their Parallel Realities tour, which included a memorable performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in July 1990.

Hancock's next album, ''Dis Is Da Drum'' released in 1994 saw him return to Acid Jazz. Also in 1994, Hancock appeared on the Red Hot Organization's compilation album, Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool. The album, meant to raise awareness and funds in support of the AIDS epidemic in relation to the African American community, was heralded as "Album of the Year" by Time Magazine.

1995's ''The New Standard'' found him and an all-star band including John Scofield, Jack DeJohnette and Michael Brecker interpreting pop songs by Nirvana, Stevie Wonder, The Beatles, Prince, Peter Gabriel and others. A 1997 duet album with Wayne Shorter titled ''1 + 1'' was successful, the song "Aung San Suu Kyi" winning the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition, and Hancock also achieved great success in 1998 with his album ''Gershwin's World'' which featured inventive readings of George & Ira Gershwin standards by Hancock and a plethora of guest stars including Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell and Shorter. Hancock toured the world in the support of ''Gershwin's World'' with a sextet that featured Cyro Baptista, Terri Lynne Carrington, Ira Coleman, Eli Degibri and Eddie Henderson.

In 2001, Hancock recorded ''Future2Future'', which reunited Hancock with Bill Laswell and featured doses of electronica as well as turntablist Rob Swift of The X-Ecutioners. Hancock later toured with the band, and released a live concert DVD with a different lineup which also included the "Rockit" music video. Also in 2001, Hancock partnered with Michael Brecker and Roy Hargrove to record a live concert album saluting Davis and John Coltrane called ''Directions in Music: Live at Massey Hall'' recorded live in Toronto. The threesome toured t support the album, and have toured on and off through 2005.

2005 saw the release of a duet album called ''Possibilities''. It features duets with Carlos Santana, Paul Simon, Annie Lennox, John Mayer, Christina Aguilera, Sting and others. In 2006, ''Possibilities'' was nominated for Grammy awards in two categories: "A Song For You", featuring Christina Aguilera was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance, and "Gelo No Montanha", featuring Trey Anastasio on guitar was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Performance. Neither nomination resulted in an award.

Also in 2005, Hancock toured Europe with a new quartet that included Beninese guitarist Lionel Loueke, and explored textures ranging from ambient to straight jazz to African music. Plus, during the Summer of 2005, Hancock re-staffed the famous Head Hunters and went on tour with them, including a performance at The Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival.

However, this lineup did not consist of any of the original Headhunters musicians. The group included Marcus Miller, Terri Lyne Carrington, Lionel Loueke and John Mayer. Hancock also served as the first artist in residence for Bonnaroo that summer.

Also in 2006, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (which bought out Hancock's old label, Columbia Records) released the two-disc retrospective ''The Essential Herbie Hancock''. This two-disc set is the first compilation of Herbie's work at Warner Bros. Records, Blue Note Records, Columbia and at Verve/Polygram. This became Hancock's second major compilation of work since the 2002 Columbia-only "The Herbie Hancock Box" which was released at first in a plastic 4x4 cube then re-released in 2004 in a long box set. Hancock also in 2006, recorded a new song with Josh Groban and Eric Mouquet (co-founder of Deep Forest) titled "Machine". It is featured on Josh Groban's CD "Awake". Hancock also recorded and improvised with guitarist Lionel Loueke on Loueke's debut album Virgin Forest on the ObliqSound label in 2006, resulting in two improvisational tracks "Le Réveil des Agneaux (The Awakening of the Lambs)" and "La Poursuite du lion (The Lion's Pursuit)".

Hancock, a longtime associate and friend of Joni Mitchell released a 2007 album, ''River: The Joni Letters'', that paid tribute to her work. Norah Jones and Tina Turner recorded vocals, as did Corinne Bailey Rae, and Leonard Cohen contributed a spoken piece set to Hancock's piano. Mitchell herself also made an appearance. The album was released on September 25, simultaneously with the release of Mitchell's album ''Shine''. "River" was nominated for and won the 2008 Album of the Year Grammy Award, only the second jazz album ever to receive either honor. The album also won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Jazz Album, and the song "Both Sides Now" was nominated for Best Instrumental Jazz Solo.

Recently Hancock performed at the Shriner's Children's Hospital Charity Fundraiser with Sheila E, Jim Brickman, Kirk Whalum and Wendy Alane Wright.

His latest work includes assisting the production of the Kanye West track "RoboCop", found on 808s & Heartbreak.

On June 14, 2008, Hancock performed at Rhythm on the Vine at the South Coast Winery in Temecula, California for Shriners Hospital for Children. Other performers at the event, that raised $515,000 for Shriners Hospital, were contemporary music artist Jim Brickman, and Sheila E. & the E. Family Band.

On January 18, 2009, Hancock performed at the We Are One concert, marking the start of inaugural celebrations for American President Barack Obama. Hancock also performed the Rhapsody in Blue at the 2009 Classical BRIT Awards with classical pianist Lang Lang. Hancock was named as the Los Angeles Philharmonic's creative chair for jazz for 2010–12. In June 2010, Hancock released his newest album, ''The Imagine Project''.

On June 5, 2010, Hancock received an Alumni Award from his alma mater, Grinnell College.

Discography

{| cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" border="0" |- style="background:#ffdead;" ! align="left" style="border-bottom:1px solid grey; border-top:1px solid grey;" | Title ! width="10" style="border-bottom:1px solid grey; border-top:1px solid grey;" | ! align="left" style="border-bottom:1px solid grey; border-top:1px solid grey;" | Year ! width="10" style="border-bottom:1px solid grey; border-top:1px solid grey;" | ! align="left" style="border-bottom:1px solid grey; border-top:1px solid grey;" | Label |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Takin' Off'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1962 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Blue Note |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''My Point of View'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1963 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Blue Note |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Inventions and Dimensions'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1963 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Blue Note |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Empyrean Isles'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1964 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Blue Note |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Maiden Voyage'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1965 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Blue Note |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Blow-Up'' (Soundtrack) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1966 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | MGM |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Speak Like a Child'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1968 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Blue Note |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''The Prisoner'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1969 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Blue Note |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Fat Albert Rotunda'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1969 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Warner Bros. |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Mwandishi'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1970 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Warner Bros. |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''He Who Lives In Many Places'' (with bassist Terry Plumeri) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1971 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Airborne. |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Crossings'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1972 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Warner Bros. |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Sextant'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1973 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Head Hunters'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1973 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Thrust'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1974 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Death Wish'' (Soundtrack) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1974 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Dedication'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1974 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Man-Child'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1975 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Flood'' (Live album) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1975 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Secrets'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1976 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''VSOP'' (Live album) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1976 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Herbie Hancock Trio'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1977 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''VSOP: The Quintet'' (Live album) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1977 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''VSOP: Tempest in the Colosseum'' (Live album) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1977 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Sunlight'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1977 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Directstep'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1978 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''An Evening with Herbie Hancock & Chick Corea: In Concert'' (Live album with Chick Corea) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1978 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''The Piano'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1979 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Feets, Don't Fail Me Now'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1979 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''VSOP: Live Under the Sky'' (Live album) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1979 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''CoreaHancock'' (Live album with Chick Corea) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1979 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Polydor |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Monster'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1980 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Mr. Hands'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1980 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Herbie Hancock Trio'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1981 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Magic Windows'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1981 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Lite Me Up'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1982 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Quartet'' (Live album) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1982 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Future Shock'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1983 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Sound-System'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1984 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Village Life'' (with Foday Musa Suso) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1985 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Round Midnight'' (Soundtrack) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1986 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Jazz Africa'' (Live album with Foday Musa Suso) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1987 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Polygram |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Perfect Machine'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1988 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Columbia |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''A Tribute to Miles'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1994 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Qwest/Warner Bros. |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Dis Is Da Drum'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1994 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Verve/Mercury |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''The New Standard'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1995 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Verve |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''1 + 1'' (with Wayne Shorter) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1997 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Verve |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Gershwin's World'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 1998 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Verve |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Future2Future'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 2001 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Transparent |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Directions in Music: Live at Massey Hall'' (Live album) | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 2002 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Verve |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Possibilities'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 2005 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Concord/Hear Music |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''River: The Joni Letters'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 2007 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Verve |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''Then and Now: the Definitive Herbie Hancock'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 2008 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Verve |- | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | ''The Imagine Project'' | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | 2010 | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | | style="border-bottom:1px solid grey;" | Hancock |}

Filmography

As a Leader

2000: '' Dejohnette, Hancock, Holland and Metheny – Live in Concert''

2002: ''Herbie Hancock Trio: Hurricane!'' with Ron Carter and Billy Cobham

2002: '' The Jazz Channel Presents Herbie Hancock (BET on Jazz)'' with Cyro Baptista, Terri Lynne Carrington, Ira Coleman, Eli Degibri and Eddie Henderson

2004: ''Herbie Hancock – Future2Future Live''

2006: ''Herbie Hancock – Possibilities'' with John Mayer, Christina Aguilera, Joss Stone, and more

Awards

Academy Awards

1986, Original Soundtrack, for ''Round Midnight''

Grammy Awards

# 1984, Best R&B; Instrumental Performance, for ''Rockit'' # 1985, Best R&B; Instrumental Performance, for ''Sound-System'' # 1988, Best Instrumental Composition, for ''Call Sheet Blues'' # 1995, Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Individual Or Group, for ''A Tribute to Miles'' # 1997, Best Instrumental Composition, for ''Manhattan (Island Of Lights And Love)'' # 1999, Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s), for ''St. Louis Blues'' # 1999, Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Individual Or Group, for ''Gershwin's World'' # 2003, Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group, for ''Directions in Music: Live at Massey Hall'' # 2003, Best Jazz Instrumental Solo, for ''My Ship'' # 2005, Best Jazz Instrumental Solo, for ''Speak Like a Child'' # 2008, Album of the Year, for ''River: The Joni Letters'' # 2008, Best Contemporary Jazz Album, for ''River: The Joni Letters'' # 2011, Best Improvised Jazz Solo, for ''A Change Is Gonna Come'' # 2011, Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, for ''Imagine''

Playboy Music Poll

Best Jazz Group, 1985

Best Jazz Keyboards, 1985

Best Jazz Album – Rockit, 1985

Best Jazz Keyboards, 1986

Best R&B; Instrumentalist, 1987

Best Jazz Instrumentalist, 1988

Keyboard Magazine's Readers Poll

Best Jazz & Pop Keyboardist, 1983

Best Jazz Pianist, 1987

Best Jazz Keyboardist, 1987

Best Jazz Pianist, 1988

Other notable awards

MTV Awards (5 awards in total) – Best Concept Video – ''Rockit'', 1983–84

Gold Note Jazz Awards – NY Chapter of the National Black MBA Association, 1985

French Award Officer of the Order of Arts & Letters-Paris, 1985

BMI Film Music Award "Round Midnight", 1986

U.S. Radio Award "Best Original Music Scoring – Thom McAnn Shoes", 1986

Los Angeles Film Critics Association "Best Score – Round Midnight", 1986

BMI Film Music Award "Colors", 1989

Miles Davis Award, granted by the Montreal International Jazz Festival, 1997

Soul Train Music Award "Best Jazz Album – The New Standard", 1997

Festival International Jazz de Montreal Prix Miles Davis, 1997

VH1's 100 Greatest Videos "Rockit" is "10th Greatest Video", 2001

NEA Jazz Masters Award, 2004

Downbeat Magazine Readers Poll Hall of Fame, 2005

References

External links

Official website of Herbie Hancock

Official Herbie Hancock MySpace page

Herbie Hancock at Verve Records

River:The Joni Letters at Verve Records

Possibilities Herbie Hancock

Discography Herbie Hancock Discography

Interview with Herbie Hancock on music and technology from AppleMatters

Interview with Herbie Hancock on the "Possibilities" album release from LiveDaily

Herbie Hancock: Outside The Comfort Zone Herbie Hancock interview from JamBase

"Herbie Hancock: Essential Recordings" by Ted Gioia (www.jazz.com)

Herbie Hancock's Grinnell College Alumni Award citation from Grinnell College Alumni Assembly on June 5, 2010.

Category:1940 births Category:20th-century classical composers Category:African American songwriters Category:American Buddhists Category:American funk keyboardists Category:American jazz bandleaders Category:American jazz composers Category:American jazz pianists Category:Musicians from Chicago, Illinois Category:Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grinnell College alumni Category:Hard bop pianists Category:Jazz fusion pianists Category:Jazz-funk pianists Category:Living people Category:Miles Davis Category:Blue Note Records artists Category:Modal jazz pianists Category:Post-bop pianists Category:Converts to Buddhism Category:Members of Soka Gakkai Category:Keytarists

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