Filmmaker Mark Cousins presents a personal and poetic history of world cinema in this long-form documentary. The Story Of Film: An Odyssey offers an overview of the rise of the motion picture and its role as one of the key art forms of the 20th Century, but rather than simply recount the facts of movie history, Cousins focuses on the creative and stylistic threads that unite great filmmakers through history, and instead of placing the emphasis on the American film industry in Hollywood, Cousins sets out to represent the best film artists from around the world, and the result is a documentary that embraces both familiar audience favorites and lesser-known classics from a century of filmmaking around the globe, offering a look at the many phases and forms of this lively art as well as paying homage to a rich variety of bold and innovative pictures. Produced in fifteen one-hour segments, The Story of Film: An Odyssey was originally produced for British digital cable network More4; prior to its initial broadcast, it was screened at several major film festivals, including the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival.