Dogwoof brings filmmaker Mark Cousins’ The Story of Film: A New Generation to the big screen this season, as he updates his influential documentary series with an examination of the most powerful movie images of the last decade. Following its Special Presentation World Premiere at Cannes Film Festival and BFI London Film Festival previews, the film will open in cinemas around the UK & Ireland from 17 December 2021.
A decade after The Story of Film: An Odyssey, an expansive and influential inquiry into the state of moviemaking in the 20th century, filmmaker Mark Cousins returns with this epic and hopeful tale of cinematic innovation from around the globe, as he helps to uncover new ways of seeing and being in our eclectic and voluminous digital age.
In The Story of Film: A New Generation, Cousins turns his sharp, meticulously honed gaze on world cinema from 2010 to 2021, using a surprising range of works — including Joker, Frozen and Cemetery of Splendour — as launchpads to explore recurring themes and emerging motifs, from the evolution of film language, to technology’s role in movie-making today, to shifting identities in 21st-century world cinema.
Presented in two parts and referencing nearly 100 films, The Story of Film: A New Generation touches on everything from Parasite and The Farewell, to Black Panther and Lover’s Rock.Cousins seeks out films, filmmakers and communities under-represented in traditional film histories, with a particular emphasis on Asian and Middle Eastern works — including Aamir Khan’s globally successful PK and Waad al-Kateab’s Syrian film, For Sama — as well as highlighting further boundary-pushing documentaries and films that see gender in new ways.
And as the recent pandemic recedes, Cousins ponders what comes next in the streaming age: how have we changed as cinephiles, and how movie-going will continue to transform in the digital century, to our collective joy and wonder.
For further information on the film release, please click here.
Mark Cousins is the author of the seminal text ‘The Story of Film. Updated in October 2020, complete with new chapters, this is a compelling and accessible exploration of cinematic innovation, style and the cultural impact of film worldwide. An unparalleled introduction to the medium that, 25 years later, continues to fascinate and astound.
