The Story of Film: A New Generation is a documentary directed and narrated by Irish director Mark Cousins. Released in 2021, it explores the continuing power of modern movies. Cousins also released the exquisite 2011 documentary miniseries The Story of Film: An Odyssey, which explored cinema’s inception and provides an extensive amount of information that any fan of cinema could enjoy. After that, he made a documentary series highlighting women filmmakers, Women Make Film, an epic 14-hour account of the contributions of women to cinema.

The Story of Film: A New Generation doesn’t shy away from the darker side of cinema and how corporate greed exploits celebrities and cinema’s technological achievements to make money. With all of that said, Cousins’ new documentary film is one of the greatest about the filmmaking medium ever made.

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The Story of Film focuses on audience reactions and their relationship with the screen. This relationship has been established since the earliest days of film history. Afterall, history birthed cinema through major inventions and international conflict. It was unheard of to be able to see the events of a war on televisions and movie screens around the country. However, motion picture cameras were taken all over the world to showcase stories of fiction and nonfiction. The documentary uses historical contexts and detailed informative formatting to tell a brilliant story of cinema.

Separated into two parts, The Story of Film is an organized video essay that takes a similar format to Mark Cousins’ other documentary series. What differs is the usage of contemporary archival footage from modern movies like Frozen and Under the Skin. The purpose is to continue the conversation of how technology and storytelling changed cinema in our time.

What We Want, When We Want It

     Netflix

Possibly the most powerful moment in this epic documentary film is the conversation about streaming which Mark Cousins has with the audience. The modern age of cinema has now been brought to the comfort of our own fingertips. Cousins explains how streaming has given the power back to the audience. His 2011 documentary miniseries showed how studios have become juggernauts in the game of film viewing.

However, according to Cousins, the power is back in the hands of viewers. We have the ability to watch what we want, when we want to. Films of today have utilized the hand-held format to make entire features from the lens of an iPhone. Changing technology and viewing opportunities has truly changed motion pictures as we know it. However, the genres themselves have continued to evolve over the past few decades. While discussing the 2018 “choose your own adventure” Netflix film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Cousins encapsulates what the modern age of cinema is doing for the audience:

Genres Pushing Boundaries

     Warner Bros.

The Story of Film: A New Generation explores contemporary films and their ability to break convention. Comedy films such as Deadpool and Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart are shown with Cousins’ commentary about how violence and adolescent experience complements their versatile genres. From comedy, Cousins jumps to drama and action to show how visual storytelling has evolved in the modern day. George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road is shown to prove how color and computerized imagery compliments the wider scale production values put onto the screen.

“The film wasn’t taking us somewhere, we were taking it somewhere.”

The complex documentary film shows how various genres push boundaries of new aged cinema. Utilizing groundbreaking elements from films of the past, Cousins shows that at its heart, cinema’s hold on the audience has not changed. But in the 21st century, the presentation has changed. Over the past few years specifically, audiences have been bound to their homes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The documentary explores how film has changed and in some ways, evolved after the globe shut down.

Horror Has Changed According to The Story of Film

     A24

The Story of Film gives a powerful look into modern day horror. Cousins showcases films of Jennifer Kent and Ari Aster and how they have pioneered a new age of terror on the screen. Films like The Babadook and Midsommar utilize cinematically powerful tools, from vibrant colors and intense emotions to unconventional angles and all-encompassing scores. Cousin uses these films to show how contemporary horror is in a new stage, what many call ’elevated horror.'

The most prominent note of this segment of Cousin’s documentary shows the visual representation of metaphors and fears from the audience and how it is shown on the screen. Films like It Follows and Us give audiences a powerful sense of dread by twisting our world, and the doc compares them to films of the early 20th century.

Structural Slowness

     MubiA24

This part of the documentary explains a new idea of slowness in film through independent cinema. Modern day cinema, according to Cousins, has taken its time to show empathetic characters in real time. The film does a great job of explaining this phenomenon of cinema where it has gotten as close to realism as it could be. There is a description of various films that use limited artificial lights and music. The use of silence invokes tension and connects the tissue between the fantasy world on screen to the audience’s real life dramas. The film shows boundary pushing at its finest. Silence is shown to have had the greatest impact on crafting something audiences have never seen before.

What this documentary also accomplishes is a conversation between film and viewer. Cousins will sometimes ask himself (and the audience) rhetorical questions while archive footage plays throughout. This commentary shows how much thought Cousins has put into this vast exploration of contemporary motion pictures. These questions are purposeful and do not go unanswered.

Mark Cousins and The Story of Film

     Creative Commons

Mark Cousins is the director of many acclaimed documentaries including The Eyes of Orson Welles, The First Movie, and the aforementioned Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema. Cousins is known for taking a dive into cinema’s past, present and potential future. He is not only a documentarian, but a film enthusiast and historian.

The director and narrator truly understands movies and their metaphorical nature. He examines contemporary cinema with effortless, almost scientific detail. He explores each film in a video essay format. He narrates with such precision to didactically elucidate each sequence. There is a great deal of thought that goes into Cousins’ dissection of modern cinema. He often compares films of recent decades to those from the art form’s inception. This contrast shows how elements of cinema have been consistent in their messaging, but differ in technical application.

The filmmaker has created a documentary for all fans of cinema. While the Story of Film miniseries of 2011 focused on the historical context of cinema’s progression, his 2021 version explores genres and boundary-pushing over the past decade. It is still presented in a way that is like an audiobook being read to the audience, with perfect editing that utilizes the visuals of phenomenal films to prove his point.

There is also equal representation of films all around the world. While American cinema is so accessible to many on a daily basis, what this documentary shows is that there are just as much (if not more) motion pictures across the seas that push the boundaries of modern filmmaking that might sometimes be overlooked or unnoticed. At the end of the day, The Story of Film: A New Generation is a hopeful, thrilling epic that ponders the contemporary state of cinema.