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Documentary series · Channel 4

The Story of Film: An Odyssey

2011 documentary by Mark Cousins

Verification status: Imported automatically from public Wikidata and Wikipedia records; not yet reviewed by an editor. Fields we could not find are marked “Not verified”.

Research date: 2026-11-08

Synopsis

The Story of Film: An Odyssey is a 2011 British documentary film about the history of film, presented on television in 15 one-hour chapters with a total length of over 900 minutes. It was directed and narrated by Mark Cousins, a film critic from Northern Ireland, based on his 2004 book The Story of Film.

The series was broadcast in September 2011 on More4, the digital television service of British broadcaster Channel 4. The Story of Film was featured in its entirety at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, and at the 2012 Istanbul International Film Festival. It was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in February 2012. It was broadcast in the United States on Turner Classic Movies, beginning in September 2013.

The Telegraph headlined the series' initial broadcast in September 2011 as the "cinematic event of the year", describing it as "visually ensnaring and intellectually lithe, it’s at once a love letter to cinema, an unmissable masterclass, and a radical rewriting of movie history." An Irish Times writer called the programme a "landmark" (albeit a "bizarrely underpromoted" one). The programme won a Peabody Award in 2013 "for its inclusive, uniquely annotated survey of world cinema history."

In February 2012, A. O. Scott of The New York Times described Cousins' film as "a semester-long film studies survey course compressed into 15 brisk, sometimes contentious hours" that "stands as an invigorated compendium of conventional wisdom." Contrasting the project with its "important precursor (and also, perhaps, an implicit interlocutor)", Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma, Scott commended Cousins' film as "the place from which all future revisionism must start".

Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Key facts

Official title
The Story of Film: An Odyssey
Alternative titles
Story of Film: An Odyssey
Original release
2011-01-01
Country of production
United Kingdom
Language
English
Genres
documentary television program
Seasons
Not verified
Episodes
15
Directors
Mark Cousins
Producers
Not verified
Production company
Not verified
Official website
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-story-of-film-an-odyssey
Official trailer
Not verified

Streaming

Listed service
Channel 4
Original or licensed
Not verified — public records do not confirm whether this is an original production or a licensed title.
Available now in UK
Not yet checked
Available now in Ireland
Not yet checked
Available now in US
Not yet checked
Past availability
Not verified

Episodes, events and timeline

Episode titles, summaries, running times, key events and a timeline have not been researched for this series yet. We'll add them only once they can be checked against reliable sources.

Sources