The Story of Film

How cinema was born - the story of the very first movie stars, close-ups and special effects, and travels to Hollywood to show how it became a myth.

The movies in the roaring twenties, when Hollywood became a glittering entertainment industry, and star directors such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton emerged.

The 1920s was the golden age for world cinema when movie makers were pushing the boundaries of the medium and the emergence of passionate new film movements.

The arrival of sound in the 1930s that changed everything for cinema and the birth of new types of film: screwball comedies, gangster pictures, horror films, westerns and musicals.

How the trauma of war made cinema more daring. The story starts in Italy, and moves to Hollywood, from Orson Welles to the darkening of American film and the drama of the McCarthy era.

The story of sex and melodrama in the movies of the 50s. From James Dean in On the Waterfront and the glossy weepies of the period, but also travels to Egypt, India, China, Mexico, Britain and Japan, where movies were also full of rage and passion.