A composition and a method for producing mesoporous carbon materials with a chiral or achiral organization. In the method, a polymerizable inorganic monomer is reacted in the presence of nanocrystalline cellulose to give a material of inorganic solid with cellulose nanocrystallites organized in a chiral nematic organization. The cellulose can be carbonized through thermal treatment under inert atmosphere (e.g., nitrogen or argon) and the silica may subsequently be removed using aqueous solutions of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) or hydrogen fluoride (HF) to give the stable mesoporous carbon materials that retain the chiral nematic structure of the cellulose. These materials may be obtained as free-standing films with very high surface area. Through control of the reaction conditions the pore-size distribution may be varied from predominantly microporous to predominantly mesoporous materials. These are the first materials to use cellulose as both the structural template and carbon source for a mesoporous carbon material. These are also the first carbon materials to combine mesoporosity with long-range chiral ordering. Possible applications for these materials include: charge storage devices (e.g. supercapacitors and anodes for Li-ion batteries), adsorbents, gas purifiers, light-weight nanocomposite materials, catalyst supports (e.g., for chiral transformations), gas storage, and as a hard-template to generate other materials, preferably with chiral structures.