The Story of Film: An Odyssey puts a unique and compelling epic spin on standard film histories. Director Mark Cousins traces the development of film worldwide, both as an art form and a popular pastime. 2011, digital, 180 minutes.
Part 10: Seventies Movies that (Tried to) Change the World
Part 10 takes a look at Wim Wenders in Germany, Ken Loach in Britain, Pasolini in Italy, and the new Australian cinema. While the most moving films in the world were being made in Japan, even bigger, bolder questions were being asked in Africa and South America. The episode culminates with Alejandro Jodorowsky’s extraordinary, psychedelic The Holy Mountain—John Lennon’s favorite film.
Part 11. Groundbreaking American Blockbusters in the 1970s
Star Wars, Jaws, and The Exorcist gave rise to the multiplex, but they were also innovative; at the same time in India, world-famous movie star Amitabh Bachchan shows how Bollywood was also doing new things. Bruce Lee’s movies kick-started the kinetic films of Hong Kong, where master Yuen Woo-ping talks about his action movies and his wire fu choreography for The Matrix.
Part 12: Protest Movies of the 1980s
American director John Sayles talks about the years when brave filmmakers spoke truth to power. Chinese cinema blossomed before the Tiananmen Square crackdown. In the Soviet Union, the past wells up in astonishing films, and master director Krzysztof Kieslowski emerges in Poland.
