Plot Synopsis

Award-winning filmmaker Mark Cousins provides a worldwide guided tour of the greatest movies ever made, telling the story of international cinema through the history of cinematic innovation. Adapted from Cousins' book of the same name, THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY visits the key sites in the history of cinema -- from Hollywood to Mumbai and from Hitchcock's London to the village where Pather panchali was shot -- and features interviews with legendary filmmakers and actors, including Stanley Donen, Kyoko Kagawa, Gus van Sant, Lars Von Trier, Claire Denis, Bernardo Bertolucci, Robert Towne, Jane Campion and Claudia Cardinale. THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival before its worldwide broadcast premiere on Saturday, September 3, 2011 on More4. Two years later, TCM presented the U.S. premiere of this series, showing all 15 episodes on consecutive Mondays from September 2 through December 9, 2013. For the U.S. broadcast, Cousins joined TCM host Robert Osborne to introduce each week's episode and to discuss highlights and themes. Plus, TCM supplemented this documentary series by showing movies featured in the series before and after each Monday-night episode, and, for the first nine weeks of the series, TCM also devoted its Tuesday night lineup to even more films covered in the series. Of the 119 films and dozens of short subjects, more than 30 films in this specially curated collection made their first appearance on TCM, and a significant number of those appeared for the first time on U.S. television.