LOS ANGELES • American director Martin Scorsese (photo) warned that cinema is becoming "marginalised and devalued" as a "form of comfort food" during the coronavirus pandemic, as he addressed the Toronto film festival on Tuesday.

Scorsese, no stranger to controversy after last year slamming popular superhero blockbusters as "not cinema", spoke as movie theatres remain closed in major American cities including Los Angeles and New York.

Toronto, North America's largest film festival, is taking place mainly online this year, along with a handful of drive-in and limited-capacity indoor screenings.

In a short video introducing the event's annual career achievement gala, Scorsese, 77, praised the festival for going ahead.

"The fact that film festivals are continuing to happen - improvising, adapting, making it all work somehow - is very moving to me," said the Oscar-winning director of The Departed (2006).

"Because in the press and the popular culture, what's happening... it's becoming sadly common to see cinema marginalised and devalued and, in this situation, categorised sort of as a form of comfort food."

Millions around the world have spent the past few months locked at home due to the pandemic, with many binge-watching television and films from their living rooms.

In a blistering New York Times op-ed last November, Scorsese said movie theatres are the place "where the film-maker intended her or his picture to be seen" and warned that superhero movies were crowding auteurs off the big screen.

"To celebrate its very existence is all the more important and necessary... this remarkable art form has always been and always will be much more than a diversion," added Scorsese in the video aired on Tuesday. "Cinema, film, movies, at its best, is a source of wonder and inspiration."

British acting royalty Anthony Hopkins and Kate Winslet received career awards at the virtual gala from Toronto, where both are promoting acclaimed new films that could land them their second Oscar awards.

They devoted much of their acceptance speeches, projected in an empty Toronto movie theatre, to thanking emergency workers.

Chloe Zhao, director of early Oscar contender Nomadland, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival last weekend, was also recognised for her work.

The Toronto International Film Festival runs until Sunday.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE