NEW YORK, NY.- The Film Society of Lincoln Center rings in the New Year with a New York institution, Martin Scorsese. From Dec. 26-31 at the Walter Reade Theater, the film series Scorsese Classics will bring 11 prominent titles by the Academy Award-winning director back to the big screen. Classic highlights include “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” “Goodfellas,” “Mean Streets,” and the expansive 2005 Bob Dylan documentary “No Direction Home.”

The series opens on Friday, Dec. 26, with “Who’s That Knocking at My Door,” the 1967 New York romance that introduced the 25-year-old director’s adventurous and distinctly American cinematic voice. Six years later, “Mean Streets,” Scorsese’s close-up look at small-time thugs in Little Italy, screened at the 11th New York Film Festival to widespread acclaim and established a career “at the forefront of world cinema, offering essential visions of American life while constantly challenging the styles and conventions of cinematic storytelling,” says Richard Peña, program director at the Film Society.

Honored masterworks in the series include Scorsese’s Palme d’Or-winning window on post-Watergate alienation and anxiety, “Taxi Driver;” the bruising Jake La Motta biopic “Raging Bull,” for which Robert De Niro earned his second Academy Award; and “Goodfellas,” a breathtaking chronicle of Henry Hill’s ascent in the mafia, which garnered a best supporting actor Oscar for Joe Pesci. They screen alongside several Scorsese titles that are ripe for re-examination: the jazz-age musical “New York, New York,” celebrity satire “The King of Comedy,” and an epic inside look at Las Vegas, “Casino.” Finally, three celebrated documentaries—“No Direction Home,” “American Boy: A Profile of Stephen Prince” and the personal family portrait “Italianamerican”—offer skillful counterpoints to Scorsese’s fictional works.