Baz Luhrmann

In northern Australia at the beginning of World War II, an English aristocrat inherits a cattle station the size of Maryland. When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn stock-man to drive 2,000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country's most unforgiving land, only to still face the bombing of Darwin, Australia, by the Japanese forces that had attacked Pearl Harbor only months earlier....

Christian, an idealistic and impoverished young writer who, newly arrived in Montmartre, is haphazardly inducted into a circle of young bohemians led by Toulouse-Lautrec. A comedy of mistaken identities ensues, quickly enmeshing the young poet in a love triangle involving the unobtainable and consumptive Satine, queen courtesan of the Moulin Rouge, and the foppish Duke of Roxbury, his villainous rival for her affections.

Christian is an idealistic and impoverished young writer who, newly arrived in Montmartre, is haphazardly inducted into a circle of young bohemians led by Toulouse-Lautrec. A comedy of mistaken identities ensues, quickly enmeshing the young poet in a love triangle involving the unobtainable and consumptive Satine, queen courtesan of the Moulin Rouge, and the foppish Duke of Roxbury, his villainous rival for her affections.

Australia, 1940s. An English aristocrat inherits a large ranch. English cattle barons plot to take her land and she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn cattle drover to protect her ranch. Together they experience four life-altering years, a love affair and the bombing of Darwin during World War II.

In the final part of The Story of Film: An Odyssey, movies come full circle. They get more serious after 9/11, and Romanian movies come to the fore, followed by David Lynch's Mulholland Drive becoming one of the most complex dream films ever made and Inception turning film into a game. In Moscow, master director Alexander Sokurov talks exclusively about his innovative films and then there's a surprise: The Story of Film goes beyond the present, to...

The 1920s were a golden age for world cinema. In this part, we visit Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Shanghai and Tokyo to discover the places where movie makers were pushing the boundaries of the medium. German Expressionism, Soviet montage, French impressionism and surrealism were passionate new film movements, but less well known are the glories of Chinese and Japanese films and the moving story of one of the great, now forgotten, movie stars: Ruan Lingyu....

This is the story of the movies that tried to change the world in the 70s. We start in Germany with Wim Wenders, head to Britain in the 70s and talk exclusively to Ken Loach, travel to Italy, see the birth of new Australian cinema, and then arrive in Japan, which was making the most moving films in the world. Even bigger, bolder questions about film were being asked in Africa and South America, and the story ends with John Lennon's favorite film,...

This opening of The Story of Film: An Odyssey shows the birth of a great new art form, the movies. Filmed in the very buildings where the first movies were made, it shows that ideas and passion have always driven film, more than money and marketing. We hear the story of the very first movie stars, close-ups and special effects and then we travel to Hollywood to see how it became a myth. The story is full of surprises, such as the fact that the greatest,...

This is the story of the dazzling 1960s in cinema around the world. In Hollywood, legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler reveals how documentary influenced mainstream movies. Easy Rider and 2001: A Space Odyssey begin a new era in America cinema. And as the new wave in cinema sweeps around the world, we discover the films of Roman Polanski, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Nagisa Oshima. Black African cinema is born and we talk exclusively to the Indian master...