The Story of Film

Center for Urban History hosted the public education project "The Story of Film: An Odyssey" by Mark Cousins. The project was organized by the Odessa International Film Festival (OIFF) Film Critics’ School.

The fifteen, hour-long episodes of "The Story of Film: An Odyssesy" series will serve to familiarize film critics and all who take an interest in film with the history of international cinema from the individual, yet objective, overview provided by noted Irish film director and critic Mark Cousins.

This year Mr. Cousins will be a special guest at OIFF, head of the international jury for the OIFF 2013 Ukrainian National Film Award Cinema, as well as delivering a series of lectures at the 2013 Film Critics School.

The "Mark Cousins’ Story of Film" educational project includes the screening of his epic history of film which relates the emergence and establishment of cinematography as an artform, as well as tracing the story of its transformation across time. Tracing the line that runs from silent film through Sergei Eisenstein, Hollywood, Lars van Trier, "The Matrix" and digital movies, the series combines hundreds of hours of interviews – with actors Claudia Cardinale, Kyoko Kagawa; directors Bernado Bertolucci, Charles Burnett, Baz Luhrmann, and Claire Denis; screenwriters Paul Schrader, Robert Towne; and Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan and many more – and visits the several meccas of film-making in the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia.