Introduction to The Story of Film: An Odyssey

TCM is proud to present The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011), a 15-episode documentary directed and narrated by Mark Cousins, adapted from his 2004 book The Story of Film and chronicling more than 100 years of world film history. Beginning this month and continuing through early December, one new episode will be introduced each Monday on TCM, with a lineup of feature films and shorts related to that episode. Tuesday evenings the thematic programming continues, and includes a re-airing of the previous night's episode. By December, the entire festival will include 119 movies from 29 countries, many of them TCM premieres.

Cousins, a film critic from Northern Ireland, will appear as co-host with Robert Osborne in introducing the documentary, which uses film clips, interviews with filmmakers and footage of locations around the world to take viewers through filmmaking history from the late 19th century to today. Originally broadcast as a television series in the U.K., the documentary was hailed by The Telegraph as "the cinematic event of the year" and "at once a love letter to cinema, an unmissable master class and a radical rewriting of movie history."

September will see the documentary's first five installments, or "chapters."