George Melies (A Trip to the Moon)
Edwin S. Porter (The Great Train Robbery)
D.W. Griffith (The Birth of A Nation)
Buster Keaton (The General)
Charlie Chaplin (The Tramp)
Sergei Eisenstein (Potemkin)

Golden Era Directors

Orson Welles (Citizen Kane)
John Ford (The Searchers)
Frank Capra (It’s a Wonderful Life)
Howard Hawks (His Girl Friday)
Jean Renoir (Rules of the Game)

Post-WWII Era

Alfred Hitchcock (North by Northwest)
Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal)
Federico Fellini (8 1/2)
Francois Truffaut (Day for Night)
Akira Kurosawa (The Seven Samurai)

Film School Generation

Francis Coppolla (The Godfather)
George Lucas (Star Wars)
Steven Spielberg (E.T.)
Martin Scorcese (Raging Bull)

TV / Actors Turned Directors

Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven)
Sydney Pollack (Tootsie )
Ron Howard (Apollo 13)

Digital Age

James Cameron (Titanic)
Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings trilogy)
John Lasseter (Toy Story)