The Story of Film: A New Generation (2021) - full transcript

At the end of the 18003,

a new art form flickered
into life.

It looked like our dreams.

Movies are
a multi billion-dollar,

global entertainment industry
now.

But what drives them isn't
only box office or showbiz.

It's passion, innovation.

Stanley donen innovated when
he made singin' in the rain.

In New Zealand,
Jane campion made films

that were both modern
and gothic.

Kyoko kagawa was in perhaps
the greatest movie ever made.



Who are their equivalents
in the 21st century?

Which films
are making history now?

Welcome to the story of film:
A new generation.

An epic tale of movie
innovation around the world.

Music: Rock 'n' roll part 2
by Gary glitter

an angry man.

All his life, he's felt ignored.

But now, he's heading
to be on a TV show.

He's dressed like a joker,

a dangerous joker.

He's kicking, erupting.

He's letting himself go.

J' it's time to see
what I can do

I to test the limits
and break through



j“ no right, no wrong
no rules for me

I I'm free

j" let it go, let it go... I

an angry young queen.

All her life, she's tried
to hide her icy touch.

She can freeze the world
with that touch.

She's always hated that,
but no more.

Widescreen, euphoric.

"No right, no wrong,
no rules for me."

The joker could have sung this.

Two of the most watched
movie scenes of our times.

Both are about release.

Frozen is a totem,
and it's for kids.

Joker is a totem
for some adults.

Two of these people travelled
from Brazil to here,

to the steps in the Bronx
in New York,

where the dance was filmed.

Movies, it's clear,
still have power.

They still compel us.

They still play us like a violin

is that a surprise?

So much else has happened in
our lives in this generation.

No wonder we want
to slip the leash,

to escape into the parallel
universe of the movies.

This is the new cinematheque
in Madrid.

The beauty of it.
A parallel universe indeed.

Music: Magical awakening
by Paul mottram

what was that universe,
the movie world, like

in the last generation?

What really mattered
in film-making?

Screen out all the talk
of box office and oscars

and tabloid gossip
about stardom,

and what is left?

The medium.

Its luminosity...

Its shots...

Cuts, honesty and beauty.

What have we loved
in the new millennium of film?

And how?

We could tell our story

by looking at films
country by country,

but movies are good
at leaping boundaries.

Politicians are good
at telling us

that our country is unique,

but so many aspects
of the movies are country-less,

borderless,

so what follows
will be borderless.

When we watch a movie,
it's as if we fall asleep.

The big sleep.

2018. A Finnish film.

A woman looks,
but then the image seems

to buckle, crack, melt,

and through the melting, a man.

And then, the woman again.

Is this a bit like what
it feels to watch a film today?

To melt into it, to dissolve
into the looks

and glances on screen.

One of the best films
of our times seems to say that.

We're in a makeshift hospital
in Thailand.

Soldiers are sleeping.

The doctors close the shutters

and it's like the lights
going down in a cinema.

And that tall, thin, blue light
that curves at the top,

it wasn't there before.

It seems to symbolise
the soldiers' deep sleep,

their dream lives.

A woman befriends
one of the soldiers

and then, here, in the distance,

we see her,
walking with her crutches,

and he has collapsed
or fallen asleep.

And the camera pans...

And tilts, the very first
camera movements in the film.

And they go down
on the escalator,

down into his dreams and hers.

The setting is
an ordinary shopping mall,

but director
apichatpong weerasethakul

finds dream states in everyday
places and moments.

And then, this slow, melting
dissolve back to the hospital.

And look how many coloured
lights there are now.

It's like the whole film
falls asleep.

What happens when we dive down
into our unconscious lives,

as in cemetery of splendour?

What happens when the lights
go down in a movie theatre?

We leave our own world
for a while,

and cross over into the worlds
of other people.

Music: Magical awakening
by Paul mottram

the most innovative film-makers
have always wanted

to take us
into these other worlds.

To hypnotise us, to seduce us,

to jolt us.

And we who love the movies,

the deep dive,
don't we want to be hypnotised,

to be taken into the unknown?

Men chatter

A Tuesday evening in Cairo,

setting up a shot
in the traditional way.

Hands-on, labour intensive -

the way films have always
been made.

Most filming follows
tried and trusted methods.

They're scheduled

like many previous movies
have been scheduled.

They're shot with similar
crews, aims and visual ideas.

Nothing wrong with that.

Many of our favourite films
followed the conventions.

But our story here is about
the movies around the world

that pushed the conventions...

That came up with brand-new
ways of doing things.

They're the ones that renewed
the medium of film,

that showed us things
we hadn't seen before.

In part two of our story,
we'll look at how and why

films in the 21st century
have broken the rules.

But first,
what films extended the rules?

If you want to get crazy,
we can get crazy.

Shrieking

what movies stretched
the cinema conventions

like mozzarella?

Shrieking

comedies did so,

as did action movies,

and films about dance,
bodies, horror, slowness,

politics

and our dream lives.

Let's look at comedies first.

Which did new things
in the 21st century?

One of the world's most famous
actors, aamir Khan,

is playing an alien
from another planet.

To get home, he needs
to hold people's hands.

Very widescreen.

The brightness, colours
and musical energy

of a hindi film dance sequence.

Man sings in hindi

a crane shot,
like in old Hollywood.

Khan wore green contact lenses
and didn't blink throughout.

The fun of so-called bollywood
often comes

from its choreography...

Its world in unison.

The alien is an innocent.

He doesn't know what gender,
religion, nation or caste are.

He's boyishly anti-sectarian,

exactly what India needs.

But then, over an hour later,

in such a light-hearted
comedy, this.

Loud explosions

a terrorist attack,

one of the biggest tonal shifts
in contemporary cinema.

Screaming

electronic noises,

as if the soundtrack itself
has been mangled by the blast.

The combination makes pk
remarkable.

It was one of the biggest
box office successes

in Indian film history,

which means that it had

one of the biggest audiences
of our times.

Singing in hindi

Car horn blares

hey, oh, oh!

Oh, shit!

Two teenage girls,
their own body-popping world,

riffing off each other,
like the Marx brothers.

J” yeah, we know it, keep going

j' I came straight off the stage
of glasto... j'

- what?
- What?

Excuse me. Oh, oh.

What? What?

- Missed ya.
- I missed you.

- I missed you so much.
- It's been one night.

- Are we gonna go to school or?
- No. I don't think we are.

No, we're just gonna stay? Here.

J' I don't wanna stress ya out

j“ I just wanna tell ya
the truth

j' motherfuckers try
to tear us apart... j'

ajump cut.

The whole film feels
like a jump cut.

I my revolution ain't
me lovin' you... j”

so full of verve.

School life ignores them.

Jump cut again.

It's like they're invisible.

I swear to god.

Are you kidding me! Samantha!

Where was this energy

at my inauguration assembly,
folks?

True.

Narrator: They're brainy
and bookish,

whereas everyone else seems
to be partying.

It's similar to the funny,
private body language

the girls had in grease.

J” ipana
with a brand-new flavour

j' it's dandy for your teeth

j" brush-a, brush-a, brush-a

j” new ipana toothpaste

j” brush-a, brush-a
brush-a... j”

j” baby, please... j”

but grease was nostalgic.

Booksmart is
effortlessly modern...

Oh, sorry, sorry.

About sexuality.

- Here.
- Sharp elbows.

Not as sharp as your... chin.

What?

Um, so isn't it crazy
that it's the last day?

I know, I can barely believe it.

Are you going to come
to Nick's tonight?

His aunt went on a cruise ship
that broke down,

so Nick's throwing a party
at her house.

That's awesome.

It's all right.

They're... you know,
they're stuck on a boat,

shitting in buckets.

That's not really what I meant.

Narrator: Life keeps
cutting through it.

All right, well...

All right, I'll see you later.

I'll just, um... fuck!

Narrator: The girls' chat
shows how smart they are.

That was bad. I don't even know
if she's into girls.

She wore a Polo shirt to prom.

Well, that's just
her gender performance.

It's different
from her sexual orientation.

- I'm sorry, but I don't get it.
- Well, gender is...

No, thank you,
that much I understand.

It's just?
It's a little bit shocking

that, that you're into Ryan.

First crush, the little
white cat from the aristocats.

You go from that
to avril lavigne.

It's just, it's not?
It's not what I anticipated.

Narrator: But they live life
in theory.

It's time for them to party.

The quick beauty and energy
of the insights.

A film that extends
the world of film comedy.

Deadpool was just as fast,
as diamond-sharp,

even its opening titles.

A superhero movie usually has
bombastic music,

but here the song is camp
and macho-mockery.

A slow-mo, corkscrewing,
pull-out.

And the credits.
"Some douchebag's film."

"God's perfect idiot."

Music: Angel of the morning
by juice Newton

j” if morning's echo says... j”

"a hot chick."

The clichés fall like dominoes.

The shot is bravura but disses
the lust for violence...

J” and if we're victims
of the night

j” I won't be blinded
by the light... j”

and for sexual norms.

J” just call me angel... j”

a head in the ass of deadpool.

A funny cgi vortex.

J” before you leave me
baby... j”

deadpool holds on
to the knickers of a villain.

Queerness sprinkled
like chilli flakes.

The language of superhero
comedy extended.

J” just call me angel

j” I'm a guarding angel... j”

the Ugandan comedy crazy world

also had a lot of fun
with its opening sequence.

An actor playing
a copyright cop.

Mocking Hollywood's
piracy controls.

A big budget for tracking
shots, or fancy costumes?

Not necessary
when your imagination is

as playful as this.

Church organ plays

the least expected comedy
of our times came

from one of the most serious
film-makers of our times,

Bruno dumont.

We're in the north of France,

the funeral of a local
who's been murdered.

We expect solemnity.

Static feedback

but we get an organist
in a world of his own...

Static feedback

clueless priests who think

they control their flock,
but don't...

Incense, which is supposed
to be spiritual,

but just makes you cough.

Widescreen realism at
the behest of a lovely anarchy.

Chers amis...

Car horns blare

from comedy to the some of
the most striking action films

of our times.

No surprise that India,

one of the most populated
countries in the world,

one of the most
visually complicated,

continued to excel at action.

The gangs of wasseypur is
five hours long

and covers five decades

in the lives of Indian gangsters

who fight over coal mining.

This is the end of part one.

The sound fades.

Shouting fades

then, silence.

Sardar, who's been trying
to avenge his father's murder,

is bloodied and beaten.

He's dazed, dying.

If this was a Francis Ford
coppola gangster film,

opera music might play.

But here...

Music: Jiya tu by Manoj tiwari

the music seems like it's
from a hip Mumbai nightclub.

Music: Jiya tu by Manoj tiwari

and then, astonishing lines.

A tragic scene
that mocks the tragedy.

Sardar's on a cart now.

The cart will take away
his body...

And then his gun.

Gunshot

80 years after
the first gangster pictures,

the gangs of wasseypur
was one of the most complex.

Equally inventive was this scene

from prolific Hong Kong
director Johnnie to.

Long lenses.

A most 21st-century location -
a recycling site.

Bales of paper,
rolling like tumbleweed.

But then, we see that
it's triads doing the rolling.

Gunmen push bales of paper
towards their adversaries,

hiding behind them as they do.

The bales look like
Van gogh haystacks,

but the scene is visually new.

This wide shot of the plant,
the vista.

Paper in the air, like seagulls.

It's like a kurosawa film.

And then, the shooting starts.

Slow-mo.

Gunfire

genre thinking

which extended the existing
language of the movies.

In zama, Argentina's
lucrecia martel had

an even less expected
action sequence.

17th-century Argentina,

Spanish colonisers, surrounded
on a Savannah plane.

Indigenous tribesmen,
painted orange.

Horse whinnies

a rider comes towards them.

Two of the Spanish turn.

A third is felled.

Shouting

then, a horse through the shot.

No action sound, no blood.

Behind a tree,
then from the back.

Down and up,
all parts of the frame used.

Such complex staging.

And this background guy,
standing, out of focus.

More great visual thinking.

Giggling

sirens wail

and talk about visual thinking.

Good time, made by two of the
most distinctive film-makers

of the 21st century,
the safdie brothers.

Benny safdie on the right.

Robert pattinson plays
his brother.

They've just robbed a bank.

High-pitched beep

what was that sound?

Hissing

what the fuck did you do?

Screaming

chaos. Mist. Crash.

Horn blares

man coughs

man retches

it's my face... my face.

Narrator: They look fluorescent,

like they're in a computer game.

Pulsing sound.

- My face...
- Look at me. Your face is ok.

Open your eyes.
Come on, come on.

Narrator:
Edgy, hand-held imagery.

Amidst it all,
the love of the brothers.

And then, the whole film
seems to be pink.

An adrenalized movie.

The brothers escape,
houdinis on the run.

I'm going to throw up.

- What did I just tell you?
- I don't know.

I told you
you're not going to throw up.

Tyres screech

horns blare

so, in our new century,

the best action cinema has been
tonally inventive,

visually innovative
and colour-coded.

The best action film
of our times was all of these.

George Miller's
mad Max: Fury road,

an explosively inventive update

of his steampunk mad Max films.

An eco-disaster means
that everything -

fuel, blood, morality -
is scarce.

Everything is handmade from
junk in this artisanal epic.

A guitar, which is also
a flame-thrower,

and has a toilet bowl
as its base. Punk.

Vehicles like tanks,
galleons, bombs.

The camera close to the ground,

to give a better sense ofspeed.

Engines roar

immortan!

Joe, the villain, with animal
teeth and breathing apparatus.

Man gasps

he looked at me!

He looked right at me!

He looked at your blood bag.

He turned his head, he looked
me straight in the eye.

He was scanning the horizon.

No, I am awaited.

I am awaited in Valhalla.

Max, traumatised.

A wild boxer with a garden fork
for a muzzle.

Immortan!

Filming in the Namibian desert.

George Miller's colour palette,
mustard sand

and pops of red.

A health and safety nightmare.

They roar up the road.

Backgrounds were added in cgi

and safety lines removed
in post production,

but the action itself was real.

The crashes, the dust,
the explosions were all real.

In the era of computerised
fight scenes,

Miller said, "none of it
defied the laws of physics."

We felt the velocity,
the physicality.

Then, charlize theron's funosa,

shaven-headed.

No barbarella here.

Max and she don't fall in love
or become friends.

Cirque du soleil?

A circus of the desert.

Engine purrs

2,700 shots,

averaging
just three seconds each,

orchestrated by editor
Margaret sixel.

In the digital age,

in the weightless age,

a film that reminded us
of silent cinema, of this.

The most expensive, extravagant,

weighty shot of its time.

Buster Keaton's the general
has a double structure.

It's a journey up a road,

then back down it again.

Mad Max: Fury road is the same.

As if to emphasise his debt
to buster Keaton,

George Miller also had
mad Max: Fury road released

in black and chrome.

Explosions

it seemed more elemental,

even more part
of the story of film.

A movie with little dialogue,

it did that traditional thing -

used action to reveal character.

Woman: We can't breathe
down here!

Narrator: How someone copes,
what they need.

Now!

This looks like
an action movie too,

and in many ways, baby driver
is an action movie.

It's a heist movie.

But hidden within it and
driving its rhythm and style

is another genre -

our next genre, the musical.

How have film-makers innovated
with dance in recent years?

Music: Harlem shuffle
by Bob and Earl

Edgar Wright's baby driver.

Tilt down
to the title character.

J” you move it to the left
yeah... j”

he's on an ordinary street,

but we notice
that he's moving to the music.

He even seems
to skip to the beat here.

Tyres screech

- asshole!
- Hey! Hey!

No cut in this shot.

J' with a whole lot of soul... j”

baby almost danced
around this pole.

J” just make it last... j”

hey! Jerk!

J” you know you scratch... j”

his movements respond
to the street scene.

The world has a beat.

Wright's mood reel,
the video he made

to show to funders and crew

how the finished movie
would feel,

showed that baby driver extended

the language of classic cinema.

He used this clip.

Digging.

Snonng.

Digging and snoring
alternate rhythmically

brushing

brushing in synch,
building a rhythm.

Hissing and clinking add
to rhythm

shutters open.

A choreographed street.

Dance beneath the surface
of the world.

Sound effects create
pulsing beat

J” no, I've got no time

j” to play your

j” silly games... j”

at first, this looks
more conventional.

A house party in London
in the 19803.

Warm colours,
bodies close together -

what we couldn't do in lockdown.

A movie smooch.

But director Steve McQueen
and his team created

such a mood during the shooting

that, as the song ended,
this happened...

J” every time I hear
your name... j”

sing along, let's go!

Narrator: The dancers extend
the song.

They push back the problems
of the world for a night.

J” inside... j”

that's what I'm talking about.

J” cos every time we meet

j” we play hide-and-seek... j”

j” play it on
the radio station... j”

another dance film
pushing the boundaries,

Beyoncé's visual album lemonade.

J” you just might be a black
Bill Gates in the making

j” cos I slay

j” I just might be a black
Bill Gates in the making... j”

historical costumes,

shots that look
like cheap video,

newspaper politics.

J” I grind till I own it
I twirl on my haters... j”

the editing of music videos,

but the spurs of a cowboy.

Her head from above.

A kid dances to cops.

A montage of moments,
histories, protests, dances.

Hard not to be ovennhelmed
by a net cast so widely.

J” I slay, ok I slay, ok

j” I slay, ok I slay, ok

j” I slay, ok I slay, ok

j” we gon' slay, ok
gon' slay, ok

j” we slay, ok I slay, ok... j”

where else in the movie world
has dance been a big deal

in the 21st century?

As with action films,

India has continued
to be dance cinema central.

In so-called bollywood,

dance has always been
a mood enhancer.

Of the thousands of dance
sequences in this period,

one of the most choreographed
was this...

Music: Tattad tattad
by Aditya narayan

in ram-Leela, a reworking
of Romeo and Juliet.

Vibrating, then slow-mo.

Widescreen, of course.

A celebration of gujarati
clothes and buildings.

A kind of West Side story.

Man sings in hindi

At one point,
it's like it's shot

with a surveillance camera.

And then, shaking
dandruff out of your hair,

a dance move that went viral

and was copied across India.

In western cinema, there were
the magic Mike films,

but bhansali's movie was
more choreographed.

Actor ranveer Singh's body was
very on display in ram-Leela,

but films have always been
attracted

to bodies, haven't they?

Jane Russell came from

a down-to-earth
Minnesota family,

but the movie machine
squeezed her

into the tiniest swimsuit

to show her angles and curves...

J” I'm looking for trouble

j” I'm gonna throw the book away

j” be unpredictable
from day to day

j” in every way I can

j” so this cinderella

j” is looking for a fella... j”

and filmed her from above,
the better to see her cleavage.

Luckily, she had a sense
of humour and great talent.

Has 21st-century film done
anything new with bodies?

Has it extended
how it films them?

Yes.

In lorene scafaria's hustlers,

we see women just as undressed,

just as performing,

just as sexualised.

Music: Etude no1 in
a flat minor by Thomas leyer

- tabletop.
- I can't do that.

But here, a woman is looking.

She's learning.
This is a school room.

What if you don't have muscles
to do that?

- You have muscles to do this.
- I don't have any...

Every girl has muscles
to do this.

You can do this one.
This is the Martini.

Fireman down.

Narrator: Confidence building,
peersuppod.

The film isn't starry-eyed

about pole dancing
and stripping.

It's a job, and these women
are so good at it

that they can turn the tables
on men.

- Just point your toes.
- Ok.

There you go. Hold yourself up.

I'm trying!

Try laying flat across.
Do a tabletop.

They all love seeing that.

Narrator: And talking
of turning the tables,

of upending stereotypes
in 21st-century movies,

what about this film
about bodies?

Man gasps

two young African-American lads
on a beach.

They kissed and are now doing
something more sexual.

The velvet, black sea.

The cool moonlight.

Their vulnerability.

I'm sorry.

What you got to be sorry for?

Ten minutes later, we jump
fonnard several years.

The thin lad
who was on the left, chiron,

has bulked up now.

J” when the scene unfolds

j” young girls
13 years old... j”

earlier we saw him being beat
up and now he's like robocop.

His muscles are
like a suit of armour.

J” ain't in this new world order

j” dem experimenting
in Atlanta, Georgia

j” United Nations, overseas? J”

he touched male skin,

but couldn't deal with
the judgement, the derision,

so his body became inflated,
rock hard.

The poster of moonlight showed
chiron at three stages -

boy, teenager and man -

and with three different
skin tones.

Often, we can feel
the film-maker searching

for the tone of their film,

but director Barry Jenkins had
his from the start.

Moonlight had the mood

of hou hsiao-hsien's
equally tripartite

Taiwanese film three times.

Longlens,

velvet smooth,

tentative, in love.

J” give me an answer, love

j” I need an answer, love... j”

another recent film
that pushed the boundaries

of how male bodies
are portrayed was this one.

A Portuguese man,
tied up in a forest.

He looks down at his body.

Women chat in distance

who tied him?

These two Chinese women.

They're on the st James
pilgrimage in Europe.

It's like a biblical scene,

but gender-flipped,
power-flipped.

You're awake, Fernando.

Why did you tie me up
like this, fei?

We're cursed.

St James cannot help us
any more.

Only st Anthony can help us.

Stop this nonsense. Let me go.

No, we can't, Fernando.

What do you mean you can't?
What do you want from me?

You... stay.

Narrator: The white, male,
strong European

turned into a plaything,

an object of veneration
or torture.

Fernando: What are you saying?

Narrator: What other new ways
did film-makers look at bodies

in recent years?

In xxy, an intersex teenager
looks at their body.

Then, outside, the lad
they've just had sex with.

Similar composition.
Looking and learning.

The storm of adolescence.

Slow recognition
of who they are,

what their bodies are.

French film-maker
Lucile hadzihalilovic is

one of the great
body film-makers.

Here, she pushes the idea
of in-betweenness

into almost Sci-Fi territory.

An ultrasound,
a baby in the womb.

A boy's eyes, shadowless.

Then this wide.

Is he pregnant?

The way she touches his belly,

the softness of the colours.

The opposite of melodrama.

Blank faces.

A hushed nightmare,
like a Paula rego painting.

Another belly, milk on it.

A blank face,
like evolution faces.

Wider, the same muted palette,

and another kind of Sci-Fi.

This young woman is
on a spaceship.

She was impregnated
against her will

and now, she's lactating.

French director Claire denis'
films are often about bodies.

In high life, the bodies are
invaded or desperate for touch.

It got me.

This child has been invaded,
in a way.

She's accused
of being possessed,

of being a witch.

She's tied
to a huge cotton reel,

dragged from school,

as if by an umbilical cord.

Explorer. Repeat.

Expect a communication blackout
at any moment.

Copy that, Houston.

Four years earlier,

Alfonso cuaron made
an umbilical body film.

Sandra bullock plays
an astronaut

whose daughter has died.

Cameras on gyroscopic heads,
actors spinning.

No sense of up or down.

An apparently single shot.

The shock and nausea
of dizziness,

dramatically exciting
and innovative,

but also a sense
that grief is like spinning.

- We've lost Houston.
- Ah.

- We've lost Houston.
- Unstrap.

We need to get the hell
out of here.

- Need some help there?
- No, don't wait for us.

It's stuck.

Man down! Man down!

Houston, this is explorer. Copy.

Explorer's been hit.
Explorer, do you read?

Explorer. Over. Explorer.

Astronaut is off structure.

Dr stone is off structure.

Dr stone, detach.

Compare that to this
great film about bodies

by another great
Mexican director,

made 50 years earlier.

Music: Gloria in d major rv 589
by Vivaldi

The woman as heavy as
bullock's astronaut was light.

The devotional music,
a via dolorosa.

And then, he's carrying a man.

Uphill.

And then, we see it's a carcass.

Was he imagining
the other bodies?

And perhaps the least expected
recent film

to look at bodies?

Maybe it's this one.

A hand without a body.

It rests a moment,
looks across the rooftops.

Blue light. Should it jump?

It does, but, in that moment,

a black and white flashback

to itself as a baby

when it was a whole body.

Handprints.
Danger in the electric socket.

Snot.

Discovering the world
through its body.

Music: Perfect shadow
by Rob Kelly

Can anywhere, anytime,
seem horrific?

Can we imagine New York City
as an open coffin,

a hell below us, boiling up?

Have all decades been good
at horror cinema?

The 1920s set up the template.

Horror went camp in the '503,

blockbustery in the '703,

and Japan took the lead
in the 1990s.

In our own times,
horror is on fire again.

Its language is being extended.

Lauta!

Classical music plays

Bravo. Bravo, susie.

Berlin, 1977.

A febrile dance school,
run by witches.

Dakota Johnson seems to be
possessed as she dances.

Intercutting between her

and, in brown, a body
which is beaten and deformed

as it mirrors her.

Luca guadagnino's suspiria

was a rethink

of an Italian horror classic
but, in its new setting

and faded '70s browns
and beiges,

it combined the grotesque

with state communist paranoia
and control.

Director Jennifer Kent used
a darker colour palette.

An Australian woman in bed
at night.

Her husband has been killed
in a horrific accident.

Scraping

scraping, a door,
half-seen in the gloom.

Door creaks

Scuttling

the shiver of that black thing,

scuttle of an insect.

Scuttling

creatu re: Babadook.

Dook. Dook.

Its voice makes us dread
what she might see,

but we also want to see.

Scuttling

gothic, storybook home invasion.

Terror.
A brilliant, spiky, noir world.

Muted screams

we slowly realise that
what she's really haunted by

is the shock of seeing
her beloved die.

Two years later, in Estonia,

a father caresses his dead son.

But then, a kind of babadook.

Groaning

a slave, made of farm
implements, rises.

Dad looks like
a Rembrandt painting.

Violence.
Imagery like lithographs.

Ari aster's midsommar was
as bright

as the babadook
and November were dark.

You can't speak, you can't move.

All right?

Good.

Narrator: She's talking
to the boyfriend

of the main character.

Sunshine, flowers,
white costumes.

Images of holidays
and happiness.

But not here.

Woman: On this, the day
of our deity of reciprocity,

we gather to give special thanks

to our treasured sun.

As an offering to our father,

we will today surrender
nine human lives.

As harga takes,
so harga also gives.

Narrator: His girlfriend is
in a pyramid of flowers,

a ritual she doesn't understand,

but she knows it's deadly.

Woman: One of our own.

Narrator: She's seen
unspeakable things.

A cloud pyramid.

Too much order,
too much symmetry.

Woman: Nine in all,

to die and be reborn

in the great cycle.

The four new-bloods have
already been supplied.

Narrator: Director Ari aster
called his film

"the wizard of oz for perverts."

Just as inventive was another
horror movie - it follows.

Come look at this.

Ever since she'd had sex
with a guy,

a teenager called Jay
has been followed

by people, entities,

walking slowly, inexorably,
towards her.

They will kill her -

a horror staple, you could say.

But director David Robert
Mitchell used a brilliant form.

Take this shot, for example,

halfway through the film.

The camera circles right.

By this stage,

we, the audience, are looking
for distant walkers.

And there's one, in a white top.

But the camera moves onwards,

and now,
the Walker is behind us.

And there's Jay with a guy.

Does she see the Walker-killer?

No. Most film-makers would do
a reverse cut to it,

but Mitchell just circles
onwards.

Tannoy: Tickets are $5 dollars
for students

and $7 for adults.

Narrator: How close will the
Walker be as we next pass by?

Boom

booms on the soundtrack.

Boom

boom

boom

and still we circle.

Boom

boom

and Jay, again.

We hope she'll look up.

And as the camera moves in,
still with no cut,

it sort of becomes the point
of view of the killer.

We can feel the threat
at our backs.

What is the Walker really?

Jay's guilt? A metaphor for
sexually transmitted disease?

Whatever,
the film electrified space

like few others of our time.

Boom

the slow pan around felt

almost like this famous
experimental film -

Canadian Michael snow's
la région centrale.

The slow circle, drone.

Beeping

snow eventually went further

and had his shot twist
upside down.

The best horror films
of our time twisted our world.

Near the end of our story,

we'll come to movies by
Jordan peele and bong joon-ho,

which did this with aplomb.

We think of cinema
as a dynamic entertainment,

full of action and story,

but there have always been
slow films,

for example, this one,

limite, from Brazil in 1931.

Birds.

Then, such a slow dissolve
to the woman, handcuffed.

We scan the image,

but then we look again
because it doesn't go away.

It dissolves slowly
to a close-up.

If the film-maker wanted
only to tell a story,

he'd have cut more quickly.

Instead, he seems
to want to hypnotise us.

Such hypnosis came to the fore
in our times.

Slow movies became
a kind of genre,

maybe to try to calm
the heartbeat

of the 21st century,
its mania, its pinballing.

If you're used to action films,

it's hard to love
inaction films,

but the best revived the sense
that cinema is a time medium,

that Patience is rewarding.

Pedro costa's Portuguese
slow epic colossal youth.

Two people.
A chink of daylight illuminates

the red and pink flasks.

Distant traffic and chatter

real street sound from outside,

but in here,
it feels like we're hiding

from the speed
of the outside world.

Sadness, poverty,
and waiting for better times,

but also guys with time
for each other.

Sete.

Playing cards
at the edge of Europe,

at the edge
of the financial crash.

No music, close-ups,
camera move or editing.

Just a still life,

like a painting
by still life master chardin.

Slow cinema was made
everywhere in our era.

We're in america now,

Kelly reichardt's film
certain women.

Laura dern is a lawyer.

The end of a hostage situation.

Night-time. Doors and corridors.

Muted colours.
No Hollywood hype.

He's in the back. He's unarmed.

You did good.

Inaudible discussion

We've gotten to know her,
like her,

but then, this cut...

To another character.

Another unhurried story.

And then another.

We see these new characters'
daily lives and desires.

For nearly an hour,

dern's lawyer is
out of the story.

We almost forget about her.
But then...

Is that her?

The muted colour palette again,
long shot.

Then, one of the film's
central characters,

and dern is in her background.

You could call this
structural slowness.

Woman mouths

And talking of structural
slowness, what about this?

Crickets chirrup and dog barks

night-time in the Philippines.

In the distance, a woman
and her three kids.

Her husband, a good man,
has been imprisoned

for a murder he did not commit.

Years have passed. She's
struggled to feed her family.

No music, no film lighting.

The camera tracks right
with the family.

We're more than two hours
into lav Diaz's epic film

about crime and punishment.

It's built with blocks of time,

like an igloo is built
with blocks of ice.

Our hearts break for the family,

but the film's heart
doesn't break,

even when there's a story
shock, like this one.

The real killer, fabian,
walks into shot.

We haven't seen him in ages

and we track with him.

Dogs bark

we can't see his face.

What's he going to do?
His hand in his pocket.

He's a radical student
with a grudge against society.

It's like we're in
a Clint Eastwood film now.

And then, oh no, he follows.

A thriller would out here

to close-ups,
or intercut to have music.

But director Diaz
isn't swimming in the drama.

He's detached,
Dostoevsky-detached.

Dogs bark

then, the kids and a window.

Will killer fabian appear
at that window?

Daring slowness, and dread, too.

She yawns

And we're outside as
the mother opens the window.

Dawn, and a distant fire,

and soldiers

and another dead-slow
tracking shot.

We're scanning the shot now,
looking for fabian.

The slowness gives us
a sense of place,

of dread and of history.

Knock on door
our final great slow film.

A grey image, a knock on a door.

An out-of-focus woman
goes to open it.

Knock on door

we're in her flat.

She's having an affair
with the man we're looking at.

We don't find this out
for a long time,

but the guy who's come in
is her husband.

The nerves of the lover.

Tip-toeing. No out, no music.

Door opens and closes

door closes

Door opens

then, the close-up sound
of the door opening.

Hand-held move backwards.

Footsteps

Then, the husband.

Why is he not looking
at the lover?

Only now he looks.

So, it's the shoes
that gave him away.

Tension. Breathing.

This film was made
by 29-year-old hu Bo,

who killed himself
before its premiere.

A mournful, resigned
slow-cinema masterpiece.

And then, what happens?

Off camera, the husband jumps
from the window.

Window bangs

an elephant sitting still was
a fiction film,

but it looked, at times,
like a documentary.

What about the actual
documentaries of our times?

How did they innovate?

How did they engage
with the real world?

This in the opening night
of a documentary film festival

in Minsk,
the capital of Belarus.

The movie screen is covered
in what looks like bin bags.

People crawl
from behind the screen.

The Belarus state security,
the kgb, is in the audience,

so this is filmed on a phone.

Belarus had proportionally
more deaths

than any other country
in world war ii.

A quarter of its population
died,

and two-thirds of its Jews.

Then, this happens.

The people reveal what, who?

An acrobat?
Some kind of human spider?

The spider becomes a dictator.

The people who run this festival

have been arrested
several times.

Eventually,
the dictator is slain.

Or is he?

Since the late 19903,

documentary has had
a golden age.

Observational documentaries
have always been

hungry for reality.

In our times, this one extended

the hunger, the empathy.

Yula, a Russian ten-year-old,

who lives on Europe's biggest
landfill site, near Moscow.

Her self-awareness, confidence.

Birds cry

years pass.

Yula becomes the narrator
of her unfolding life.

She stares.

More years pass.

The stare and the resignation
intensify.

The slight wobble of the image
reminds us

of the film-maker, Hanna polak,

who shot for 14 years.

It's like a medieval film.

Sama.

Narrator: A baby girl,
another observational film.

Five years of shooting.

Sama cries

The narrator is waad ai-kateab,
sama's mum.

She also co-directs
from the heart

of the war in Syria, which
has killed 400,000 people.

The film couldn't be
more grass-roots,

and yet it also has an overview,

like a drone shot
has an overview.

A story told by the person
at its centre.

A first-person film,

but, because the film-maker
talks to her daughter,

it's also a second-person film.

Baby cries

panicked chatter

boy cries

observational films are
only one type

of documentary, of course.

40 years after
the battle of Chile,

his fly-on-the-wall,
on-the-barricades,

in-the-moment account
of a coup in Chile...

Los agitadores provocan
a la policia.

Patricio guzman started
a new film,

the Pearl button, like this.

Are we seeing a science doc
or an arts film?

Then, this commentary.

What a tiny start to a film.

But then, guzman cuts
to these radio scanners,

searching the universe.

Immediately, his scale is vast,

like the audacious cut in time

in 2001: A space odyssey
is vast.

Music: The blue danube
by Johann Strauss ii

from an ancient, small
mineral drop of water

to outer space.

A lesser film-maker
might get lost

in this vast canvas,

but guzman connects
the two moments.

From here he weaves in
other stories -

genocide, how the victims
of the dictator pinochet

were drowned in the ocean,
and the environment.

Essay films are thinking films.

They take ideas for a walk.

The Pearl button does so,
brilliantly.

It extended the reach
of documentary.

In the second part of our film,

we'll look at documentaries

which didn't only extend
the existing language of film.

They came up
with a new language.

But for now,
one final documentary film -

a film that people in Belarus
would admire

because of its courage
to challenge state authority.

This is the film.

It begins with a single event
in India -

the assassination
of a secular thinker -

but it builds to encompass
the history of the country,

its constitution

and the rise of superstition

and religious fundamentalism.

This is a press conference

called to defend the murderer

of a secular activist.

The murderer's defenders are

dangerous and powerful.

In the middle of the conference,

we suddenly hear this question

about anand patwardhan,
the director of the film.

And then, patwardhan,

who's just been threatened,

speaks up.

One of the bravest moments
in recent cinema.

Patwardhan's line,
"I'm standing here," could be

a motto for documentary
film-makers at their best.

From documentary to something
else - its opposite,

the unreal aspect of film
in recent years,

its heat shimmer.

Los Angeles is good
at the unreal.

In a city of blue skies,
they paint more blue skies.

It's hard to tell the real sky
from the imagined one.

At the start of 2020,
the world closed.

People disappeared
from city streets.

Real life became unreal.

Movies, of course,
have always loved the unreal.

They've been great
at the off-kilter everyday.

More than 90 years ago,

pioneering surrealist
germaine dulac dissolved

between pov street shots

to create a kind of dizzy swoon.

Many films in recent years
have extended

this othenlvorldly way
of looking at the world.

This is the opening sequence

of ildeko enyedi's
on body and soul.

Eyes.

Touch.

Breathing.

Licking...

But not.

So unhurried, so calm.

These images could easily come
from a nature film, of course,

but soon, we meet
two shy, troubled people

who like each other

but don't quite know
how to be in love.

The deer are them
in their dreams,

their better selves.

From Hungary to Greece.

In recent years,
Greek directors have made

a series of surreal films,

which were dubbed
the "weird wave".

Athina-rachél tsangari's
attenberg has

some of the same themes
as enyedi's deer film.

A young woman with her sick dad.

Then, we see
what she's watching.

A TV show,

a man imagining what it would
be like to be an animal.

Like she's leapt species.

Then, we cut to the girl
and her friend,

walking weirdly,
like horses almost,

trying to escape
the human condition.

But the most off-kilter film
of our times

was, perhaps,
this astonishing one.

Years in the making,
three hours long,

completed after the death
of its director aleksei German,

it's set on a teeming,
rancid planet

on which art and thought
are quelled.

A bird almost touches the lens.

Then, this striking composition.

The slit of the hat.
Not an ounce of free space.

Men whistle

Then, this hand,

then a naked foot, then a boot.

And the greyness and the dirt.

And almost white now.

And the guy reaches
his hand out.

Horses' hooves thud

then, this umbrella,
out of the mist.

The movie frame
constantly invaded.

This guy is
the central character,

a visitor from earth.

The people on this planet
think he's a kind of god.

He's gone native,

like Marlon Brando
in apocalypse now.

Hard to be a god is a medieval
mad Max in the mud.

It pushed film
as far as it could go.

Boy screams

few artworks of the
21st century were more dense,

confusing or sensory.

Surely this, then, is the end
of the line in our story?

No. We're only halfway there.

Even a film as extreme
as hard to be a god

had direct connections
with the movie past.

Its muddy vortex was there
in the battle scene

in Orson welles'
chimes at midnight.

Shouting and screaming

visual chaos, the camera
almost touching the horse.

So full of texture.

Man clears throat

what lay beyond this excess?

The shock of the new.

New ways of seeing in film,

the black box,
where light matters.

The films and technologies

that did something in cinema

we'd never seen before.

Splashing

What did we just see?

A camera fell
into a Scottish loch,

then was pulled out.

It took a dive, went underneath,

then came back again
to tell the tale.

Part two of our story is
about taking a dive,

going underneath,

and coming back
a bit shocked, but renewed.

It'll be about those film-makers

who seemed to wipe the lens
so we could see anew...

Who, instead of showing
a woman's face

as she goes to the opera,

shows the back of her dress,

as if we're seeing
a bit of an old painting,

rather than the whole thing.

Orchestra tunes instruments

The Algerian desert.

A man in uniform walks
towards a wall.

A needless wall, surely?

The man is having
hallucinations,

flashbacks to a violent past.

What's the wall doing here?

In China, walls are put
in vistas to block the view.

This man can't see clearly.

He's blocked.

And then, the edge of the wall.

What's behind it?

Cut, and we follow.

Traffic and chatter

is that street sound we hear?

Car horn beeps

the wall seems far bigger now.

And we're in a city.
We've crossed a threshold.

Seagulls cry

this man has just woken up.

He was asleep, underneath,

but has come to for air,
into his hotel room.

He's still in his pyjamas.

The hotel room has
tree wallpaper.

But why is he pushing it?

Loud splintering

wow, a breakthrough.

Drone,
and the sound of seagulls.

A corridor, a room next door.

To what does it lead?

Waves lap

seagulls cry

a movie theatre.

A great start to a film.

From bed to cinema.

From undennater to seeing anew.

And the actor?

It's the film's director,
Leos carax.

One of the most visual
threshold crossings

in modern cinema.

Seagulls cry

The offspring
of this famous threshold.

Woman: Essaie.

Jean cocteau's poet plunges
into a new realm,

mirror becoming water,

hard is soft,

and then, we're in the dark.

We've left conventions behind.

The same visual idea is

in one of the most inventive
films of our times.

We're through
the looking glass of desire.

Hard and soft, like in cocteau.

She's an alien and walks
on the shiny, black liquid.

He drowns in it, in his desire.

Sliding, screeching music
by mica Levi...

Slides us into the Demi-monde,

like that of holy motors.

Both films riffed
on Jean cocteau surrealism,

but wiped the lens clean
with new ways of seeing.

Under the skin literally started

with the construction
of an alien's eye.

We see it form in huge close-up.

And, amid the frantic,
beehive music,

we hear her learn to speak.

Alien: Foals.

Foals.

A new language for her,

a new language for movies.

Foals.

And perhaps under the skin's
most daring innovation

was to shoot a Sci-Fi movie

starring one of the world's
most famous actors,

Scarlett Johansson,

as a documentary.

Do you know where asda is?

- No.
- I don't even know?

He doesn't know
he's being filmed.

The cameras are hidden.

You can see the edge
of the dashboard

in which one is concealed.

No movie lighting on her face.

Man: Left,
so it's right, then...

Real street sound.

Man: It's a big asda.
You'll see it.

- A big asda sign.
- Ok.

Am I keeping you from something?

- No.
- Where are you going?

Narrator: A complete reversal
of expectation,

a genre baptised and reborn.

- All right, thank you.
- See you later.

As challenging
as the great Iranian films,

such as this one,

abbas kiarostami
and mania akbari's ten,

which is similarly framed,

looks like a documentary...

And yet went way beyond
the everyday.

What was it like to try
to look at life anew

in our times?

For gilded film-makers,

life has always looked
like a moving target.

The world glides and twists
in front of their eyes.

Many of the best writers
and directors want to try

to describe the world anew.

But newness is also,
sometimes, handed to them.

Technology changes
how they see, how we see.

Technology changed
the story of film

in the 1920s, '50s,
'60s, '803 and '903,

and it has done so again
in our times.

Broadway legend George m cohan
stands on his plinth

in Times Square, New York.

He lived until 1942,

but would find this place
almost unrecognisable now.

He looks into a canyon
of colour and flicker.

Would he be scared by this?

Are we scared by the constant
movement and seduction?

So much has happened
in the digital canon

that we can feel dwarfed by it.

Streaming happened.

Films were available on demand,

rather than, as previously,
on supply.

"What you want when
you want it" was the new offer.

For most of movie history,

they, the film suppliers,
had power over us.

In the last generation,
we have power over them.

YouTube became
a shabby, global cinematheque,

a rewarding megalopolis
with 28 billion hits per month.

In China, douban. Com's
movie wing was having

50 million hits per month.

And Netflix, Amazon studios
and others became

production companies
of largesse,

at their best,
cosimo de' medicis

for auteurs
like Martin scorsese.

Gopro cameras, the brainchild
of surfers, launched in 2004.

They were cheap and gave
"fish-eye" visual bulges.

Ethnographers
lucien castaing-Taylor

and verena paravel
seemed to take

this "fish-eye" phrase literally

and attached cameras to fish.

This couldn't be a human point
of view or a planned shot.

It's closer, slimier,
more immersive and random

than almost anything
in the history of cinema.

Accidental visual marvels.

Nearly all cinema has been
anthropocentric.

The gopro camera was
cinema's copernicus.

The technology was creating
new ways of seeing.

Everybody who makes
knows that they're limited

by their tools in some ways,

and extended by their tools
in other ways.

As a theatre man, George cohan
would have known this.

But what would he have made
of one of these?

The world in your pocket.

Your life in your pocket.

How have they changed cinema?

The beginning
of Austrian film-maker

Michael haneke's happy end.

Obviously, a phone shot.

Vertical rather than
horizontal, hand-held.

A teenager, filming her mum.

She hates her mum.

The shot feels
like surveillance,

like the horror movie
it follows.

The fact that it's vertical
makes it feel not polished,

like cinema is polished.

It's secretive, something
for her friends' eyes only.

This fall.

In a moment, we'll see
the mother unconscious.

Seldom before had we seen
a vertical shot like this,

used like this.

What are you plotting?

A very different kind
of phone shot,

very widescreen,

the cameraperson on a bike,

racing around the sex worker.

Then, inside, intense colour.

Los Angeles as vivid
as a Hollywood musical.

Non-professional actors
unintimidated

because there isn't

a big film crew.

Movement dynamised
by the deep space

recorded by the lens

ofaniphone.

I don't know
who the fuck this bitch is,

but it's a white bitch.
It's a white, real fish.

Narrator: The only extra bits
of equipment are

a small steadicam
and some new lenses.

Woman: Started with a d.
Désirée?

The technology gave the film
its popping imagery,

but its people popped, too.

If a trans sex worker appears
in a big-budget film,

she's usually only to be
a colourful aside, a margin.

Here, she's at the centre
of the film.

The phone recentres.
Copernicus, again.

See you later. God bless.

Oh, ok. I got you.

Girl, calm the fuck down...

Narrator: If we thought
that the colour

in tangerine was extreme,
look at this.

It was directed
by Jean-Luc godard,

the veteran innovator
and disruptor.

He had his dog
looking at the world.

Video, saturated,

classical music, and then?

An everyday shot of the dog
in the snow.

Then, this.

Music: Symphony no 7
in a major by Beethoven

tangerine and Violet.

Outdoing tangerine's colours.

But godard's greater innovation
was to re-invent 3-d filming.

His dp, fabrice aragno, used

two inexpensive canon cameras,
50m apart,

mounted in wood,
one upside down.

A scene like this,

in the 2-d version
we're watching here,

seems unremarkable.

A man drags a woman.

The camera at an angle.

A man walking in the background.

Gunshot

a gunshot.

People running close to,
and further from, the camera.

But shoot with two cameras,

and you get
two superimposed images,

each from a slightly different
angle -

the essence of 3-d.

Usually, they are overlapped
in 3-d...

The aim being to get them
to match perfectly,

so that when you wear
3-d glasses, you see depth.

But what if they don't match
perfectly?

And what if you panned
one of them right?

Godard and his dp did
just that. From this...

To this.

Close your right eye,
and the flower is static.

Close your left eye, it moves.

A splitting, not seen before.

A challenge to binocular vision,

almost as if his dog was seeing
the world.

Music: Lola goes blind
by Laurie Anderson

Laurie Anderson also
was interested

in an animal's gaze.

This percussive scene is like

the opening of under the skin,

the formation of an eye.

But then we dissolve
to the seer.

It's a dog, her dog.

Woman: When lolabelle got old,

she went blind.

She wouldn't move.

She froze in place.

The only place she would run
was on the edge of the ocean,

because she knew there would be
nothing to run into there.

And so, she went running,
full speed,

into total darkness.

Godard and Laurie Anderson
wanted to try

to look at their films,
their worlds, from new places.

In comparison,
this looks more conventional.

I'm not in control.

I'm not in control.

Narrator: A young man, Stefan,

a fight with his dad,
droning music.

Stefan gasps

agitated camerawork.

Stefan, stop it, ok?

Narrator: And then,
the screen rises.

We, the viewer, are given
an option.

Kill dad or back off.

Let's decide
that we should kill his father,

to see what that feels like.

Get away from me.

Dad, just stay away from me.
I'm not in control.

Narrator: That's because
we're in control.

We have decided
that he should kill his father.

- I'm not in control.
- Stefan.

I'm not in control.

An earlier moment in the story.

A red room,
like in a David lynch film.

Industrial sounds.
Stefan as a boy.

And his mum, out of focus.

Earlier, we heard that she died
in a train crash.

The young Stefan
had delayed her,

which led to her death.

And then, we see
our previous choices.

We can click and go back
and change our choices.

Could Stefan go back
and change this moment?

As she backs out of the cave,
the red room,

another layer.
The red room is a studio set

and we're behind a man.

Is it the writer,
Charlie brooker?

But then, another cut
to grown-up Stefan.

Watching the watcher
watch his younger self

meet his mum. Our head spins.

Dad, what is this?

Narrator: In video games,

it's normal to make
story choices,

but black mirror: Bandersnatch
made them about trauma,

and was more cinematic.

As its story options multiplied,

we realised that the film
wasn't taking us somewhere.

We were taking it somewhere...

To one of eight major endings,

some of which looped
back like mobius strips.

At one point, Stefan thinks
he's being manipulated

by a future organisation,
called Netflix.

A film about forks in the road,

bandersnatch itself was
a potential fork in the road

of movie history.

Skype, Facebook, streaming,

touch screens, swiping,
on demand,

gopros giving a fish-eye view,

phones turning movie screens
on their side,

3-d re-invented,

screens between us
and the world.

Not since the invention
of photography in the 18003,

had our old sense of what
looking is taken such a hit.

And yet another technical
innovation arrived,

another way in which cinema
was reborn

or developed a new poetics.

The city of kuching
in sarawak, Taiwan.

The great film-maker
tsai ming-liang grew up here.

He was formed by this place,

by looking at it
in his childhood.

As he walked to school,
he could have looked up

at the sky, to the street,
to his feet.

Or behind him,

or further around to his left.

He could turn his head
anywhere, everywhere.

Such looking for tsai,

for all of us,
is in all directions.

It has no frame.

But when tsai came
to make cinema,

it, of course, always had
a frame.

He was brilliant at framing.

Off balance...

As if we were looking
through windows.

But what if cinema had
no frame, no window?

Is that possible to imagine?
Yes.

On the left here
is director tsai,

and, on the far right, what
looks like a black pumpkin.

It has lots of cameras in it

and films in all directions
at once.

A vr camera.

Tsai used it to shoot
a kind of ghost story

called the deserted

about this guy who's sick

and this woman
who, across the room,

is cooking rice.

Rice simmers

put on a vr headset
and turn your head,

and the image would turn
from the guy to the mother.

You looked where you wanted,

a bit like tsai did
when he went to school.

People have said that
virtual reality isn't cinema,

that it's something else.
But is that true?

Back to the joker for a moment.

Its film-makers chose this
frame for one of its shots.

Wide, long lens,
flat perspective.

We, the audience, had no say.

But vr is

more like this. You turn your
head and look where you want.

Usually, film directing
means filling

one frame,
then, after it, another.

In the deserted and the best vr,

directors are filling
many spaces

at many angles from the viewer.

It's still directing,
but there's far more of it.

Since the birth of cinema,

by putting their camera
close to the action,

many directors have tried

to make us feel
as if we're there,

close to or even in the action.

Few movies in the story
of film make us feel

that we're more there,
more inside,

than tsai's the deserted.

It's a remarkable extension

of the founding impulse
of the movies.

As we saw in part one,

documentary has been on a high
in recent years.

Something better to come,
the Pearl button,

reason and many other films
built

on non-fiction cinematic
traditions in bold ways.

But some docs seem to have been
even more innovative.

This is the second shot

of Kirsten Johnson's film
cameraperson.

We're in Missouri.
She is filming.

She calls this movie a memoir,

but most of the shots
are outtakes

from films she shot
for other directors.

She almost never points
the camera at herself.

Car approaches

a second car.

Then, this.

Kirsten gasps

we hear her gasp.

Thunderbolt cracks

the lighting is
totally out of her control,

the submission
of the doc film-maker.

Kirsten sneezes

then, something else
out of her control.

She's telling her story
using things that aren't her.

18 minutes later,
we're in Afghanistan.

Cover this eye...
Cover your hurt eye,

and look out and tell me
what you can see.

Describe everything
that you see.

A shot filmed to tell us
how this boy sees,

but as a cameraperson,

Johnson closes one eye
to look, too.

In this movie memoir,

he seems to be speaking
for her, too.

A mutual ventriloquism.

In this eye, I can feel
a little bit light.

And when I'm moving my...
Oh, sorry.

Narrator: And talking
of ventriloquism takes us

to a film about Indonesia.

In the mid-1960s in the country,

at least half a million people,
accused of being communists,

were massacred by officials
and gangs.

In 2014, Joshua Oppenheimer
released this film

about the atrocity.

On the left,
one of the murderers,

his daughter, beside him,
unaware of his brutal crimes.

The brother
of one of his victims.

The tension caught
with two cameras.

Her face hiding her realisation.

His bravery
and determination to confront.

The look of silence was
a movie monument

to the victims.

But two years before it,

director Oppenheimer

and two co-directors,
Christine cynn

and an anonymous person,
made a film

about the opposite side,

about the killers themselves.

No ordinary film.

This killer, anwar Congo,
demonstrates

with impunity and no remorse,

how he used wire
to murder his victims.

Then comes the innovation,

the audacity, the controversy.

The film-makers asks anwar,
who's a movie lover,

to recreate the massacres

on camera for a film.

Anwar watches the previous
footage of himself.

We are appalled,
but his reaction is different.

We were shocked at his crimes,
and now, we're doubly so.

And then, we see
the re-enactment.

Film noir lighting.

The killers are so enjoying
being movie stars

that it doesn't dawn on them

what a kitsch confession
this is,

how, 50 years later,

they're traducing their victims.

Call to prayer

and the film-makers -
are they complicit?

Their camera assists
with this masquerade,

this ventriloquism.

An innovative, ethical,
high-wire act,

which seems to succeed
in the end of the film,

as we watch anwar retch

at the realisation
of the scale of his crimes.

Anwar retch es

Anwar continues to retch

Anwar spits

The two films so challenged
those in power,

that many who worked on them
didn't want to be named.

And one of the most
challenging films of our times

also had people
who didn't want to be named.

I want help.

I do, I want help.

Female voice-over:
This is a film

about psychological warfare,

a specific type of warfare

designed to distract,
misinform...

And anaesthetise the brain...

Narrator: Calm, female voice,

a mosaic of film clips -

documentary, news, fiction, etc.

Voice-over: And is used
against every one of them.

Against them...

And against them.

The film was made in
North Korea, as propaganda,

to show the citizens
of that communist state

how Americans are brainwashed.

It was smuggled
out of North Korea,

its didactic commentary
translated and re-voiced

by an American woman.

Voice-over: Which is why
propagandists call themselves

the public relations industry.

Narrator: We get to see the lies

that are told about the west,

and yet we are mesmerised.

The clips and arguments
attacking western consumerism,

political banalities, hypocrisy
and greed ring true.

What the film says
about our obsession

with media, fashion, desire
and PR,

strikes us.

The North Korean propagandists
can see our society clearly.

But here's the shock,
the reversal, the innovation.

The film wasn't made
in North Korea

and wasn't smuggled
out of that country.

It was written and directed
by slavko martinov,

a New Zealander,

to make it seem
like it was from North Korea.

So the female commentary
that we hear...

Voice-over: Reading gossip
magazines,

eating vast amounts
of toxic food and shopping.

Narrator:
..Is a translation into English

of a Korean commentary

that is pretending
to be state propaganda,

but which is, in fact,
a disguised critique

of western culture, written
by a first-time film-maker,

in secrecy,
over a ten-year period.

As our heads spin with the
layers and complexity of this,

we're troubled by the mirror
it holds up to our faces.

Martinov's film was truth
in disguise -

a drag doc, a cunning spectacle,

documentary, performed
as something else.

Voice-over:
..Leading the resistance.

But when the situation seems
to be getting out of hand,

the establishment ordered it
to be stopped

and the propagandists moved
quickly

to lead the young people away
from dangerous protests,

into such fashionable protests.

Screaming

Madrid. An October morning.

Somewhere in this cemetery,
Ana mariscal,

one of Spain's greatest
movie stars, is buried.

There are no signs
for her grave.

It's not easy to find.

Her brightness, her changes
of mood, were reminders

that acting has always been
cinema's raising agent...

And one of the hardest things
to describe in film.

Has there been anything new
in acting in recent years? Yes.

Way back in the 19303,

dancer-choreographer
Marge champion was

a live-action model
for the animators

of snow white
and the seven dwarfs.

Her old-movie flow and grace
stylised, clarified, idealised.

In the 21st century,

this turned
into performance capture.

Straight-down-the-lens emotion.

Rage, a demand, a manifesto.

A better world will emerge

out of the blood and carnage
of the past.

A world found upon faith
and understanding.

Narrator: We know this isn't
an actual ape speaking,

yet the illusion is complete.

There's no uncanny valley,

that creepy feeling we get

at something that's almost
but not quite real.

We don't have to force ourselves

to suspend our disbelief.

The technology has become
like a window,

transparent enough to reveal

the quality of the acting,
the writing, the drama.

Actor Andy serkis had
scores of dots on his face,

and infrared transmitters
on his costume.

Cameras capture the movements
of his facial muscles,

in themselves, and in the light
from the right...

The carnage of the past.

Like a complex scaffold
or a ct scan.

Technology that came
from pre-cinema,

medical photography

and gaming.

In this demonstration,

it's like we can see
danninian evolution in reverse.

The layers of skin, hair,
wrinkles, sweat.

The composite is like
stanislavski plus painting,

rotoscoping and Rembrandt.

The centre of the film world,
the human face.

Inaudible

I'm a little concerned.

Narrator: In Martin scorsese's
the irishman,

the story covers

a period from 1949 to 2000.

Here, Robert De Niro
is playing frank sheeran,

a war veteran and hitman
for the mob.

A simple diner scene,
natural lighting, mid shots,

character and dialogue.

No Sci-Fi action
or special effects.

Except that de niro was 75
when this was shot,

and the character is in his 403.

Scorsese filmed his actors
in round-table scenes,

atmospherically lit.

He said of Robert De Niro
and al Pacino and Joe pesci,

"I can't have them talking
to each other

"with golf balls
on their faces."

And so, his team devised
this camera rig -

a central
and two "witness" cameras.

They called it
the "three-headed monster".

Simple dialogue and character
scenes were filmed

with the amount of kit
you'd use for an action film,

to capture the performances
from many angles.

Some of the cameras also shot
infrared,

removing the shadows, providing
another layer of analysis

of de niro's face.

That famous face was scanned
into medusa software

and thousands of images of
younger de niro were analysed.

The result was a "digital human"

who looked completely undigital.

The performance capture,
lighting acquisition,

physiognomy studies

and muscle movement simulation
were invisible.

Lies to tell the truth,

the essence of the movies.

The planet of the apes movies
and the irishman

made us think
about authenticity in acting.

The performer and film-maker
tilda swinton has often said

that the best performance
in cinema

is the donkey
in au hasard balthazar.

Affectless, uncomplaining,
just there.

Stop!

If performances could be
enhanced, simulated,

or moved back in time
in our age,

where does that leave
a scene like this?

A fiction film set in
the Soviet union in the '603.

Neo-Nazis are beating up
an American psychologist,

claiming that he's gay.

This is not a documentary,
but the actors lived,

some say for years,
on the vast set.

Many didn't break character.

14 films will be made
of the result.

And the thugs here are played
by at least one real Neo-Nazi.

He wasn't acting his rage,
homophobia or anti-semitism.

Is this justifiable?

Are we back again

to Joshua Oppenheimer's
the act of killing?

After such horrors,
it's a relief

to turn to something gentler

and more inspiring.

One of the most innovative
performances of our time

used no technology whatsoever.

Blue morning light.
An old house in Ireland.

A band has come to record
an experimental album.

The new keyboard player
is talking

to the band's mysterious lead
singer and guru, frank.

Frank: He has to convince him
to lie completely still.

Narrator: The singer wears
a papier—maché head.

Underneath it is the actor
Michael fassbender,

but we won't see his face
for 80 minutes,

only in the last section
of the movie.

Can I ask you something?

Sure.

Why do you wear that?

You think it's weird?

Kind of.

Well, normal faces
are weird, too, you know.

The way they're smooth,
smooth, smooth,

and then, bleaurgh!
You know, all bumpy and holes.

I mean, what are eyes like?

Like a science-fiction movie.
Don't get me started on lips.

Narrator: As most movies
are centred on actors,

their faces and eyes,

surely it would kill the film
not to see fassbender's?

But it doesn't.

We quickly realise
that frank is hiding.

Because of the radical use
of the false head,

we feel that he's inward,
capricious,

delicate, explosive
and inventive.

We get to know
so much about him.

- I write songs, too.
- You write your own songs?

Narrator:
Acting, not expressing.

I'd love to play some for you
some time.

I'd really like that.
Big, non-threatening grin.

Woman cries

the idea is pushed
as far as it can go here.

Shouting and crying

the back of a man's head.

He's a Hungarian Jew
in a Nazi gas chamber,

forced to gather possessions

and clean up
after the exterminations.

The prisoners are forced
into the chamber.

The clang of the door.

Door clangs shut

but the camera follows him.

Its square frame tracks him.

It can't, or won't,
take its eyes off him.

It's like this
for the whole film.

Surrounded by atrocity,
his face is blank.

Banging and screaming

bangs, screams.

The sound comes
from every direction...

Banging and screaming

but the image follows him,

like the TV camera follows
the ball in a football match.

One of the most rigorous
visual ideas in recent film.

Banging and screaming

We're getting to the end

of our story of film
in recent years.

We started
with a needy, damaged man,

a joker on steps,

and a Princess
who turns things to ice.

The camera tracked each,
followed each.

Maybe that's what cinema is -

a tracking device, following
our lives, our stories.

Then, its eye is caught
by something else.

And now, it follows
the new thing,

like David Robert Mitchell's
horror film.

As it follows us,
as it tracks us,

what does cinema see?

What has it captured about our
lives in the last generation?

The last section of our story
will be about this -

who we are, how recent cinema
has revealed us.

Let's start with the bad news.

Romanian director radu Jude's

I don't care if we go down
in history as barbarians.

Screaming

Romania today.

A tracking shot
around a burning barn.

A young theatre director
is dramatising

an event
from Romania's history -

the 1941 murder
of at least 30,000 Jews

by Romanian and German soldiers.

Some of the Jewish people
were burnt in barns like this.

The theatre director boldly
restages the atrocity.

This is the theatre director.

Then, a speech by an actor
playing ion antonescu,

Romania's prime minister
during world war ii,

who was later convicted
of war crimes.

The film's director, radu Jude,
has the actor framed side on,

in front
of the burning atrocity.

As this recreation is
in a public space

in Romania today, the theatre
director should have asked

for permission to stage
this bit of her story,

but she didn't.

She thought she'd be refused.

Cut to the city's mayor,

looking uncomfortable,
then defiant.

Then, close-up
of the theatre director,

maybe surprised

that she's getting away with
this very public accusation.

Wide, theatrical shot,
then this.

Real citizens,
ordinary people, not actors,

clapping and cheering
the hate speech, the burning.

The lesson from history
unlearnt.

Cheering and applause

People who don't seem to care
about the crime,

the attempted genocide.

Radu Jude's play within a film
within a semi-documentary

is exposing blistering
anti-semitism.

A finger pointed
at Europe today...

At something nasty in us.

And talking of us,

there was a film called us.

It pointed a finger, too.

Who pointed? We did.

Something inside us did.

Woman: Shit!

Man: We've lost power.

Narrator: A middle-class family
on holiday.

A power cut. Night. Unease.

They shriek

Jesus!

Ok, we lost power.
Go back to bed.

There's a family
in our driveway.

There is not a family
in our driveway.

Narrator: Four people stand,
backlit, unspeaking.

Narrator: A family looks mammy

it is a family.

What, you're all scared
of a family?

Narrator: And suddenly,
the son's mask looks scary,

and the mum gets the threat.

- Uh-uh.
- Hey, hey, hey.

Uh-uh.

What?

Zora, give me your phone.

- I'm not...
- Zora!

Is there someone outside?

It's just a family,
standing outside.

It's probably the neighbours.

Zora: You're kidding me, right?

Narrator: And then,
the camera is tracking

around the dispute inside.

And what are those low,
background, singing noises?

All right, sure, ok.

- Yes.
- You know what?

- What?
- I'm going to fix this.

- No, we don't.
- I'm going to find out...

- What?
- ..Who they are.

No, they haven't,
but I know they will.

Everything's going to be fine.
Calm down, ok.

- That's too long!
- Oh, boy.

No, you don't understand.

How about we all just try
to keep calm?

Gabe!

Keep our heads and
everything will be all right.

Wait, wait, just one second.

Gabe!

Narrator: And swish back.

And then, dad approaches.

Dad: Trying to have a vacation
and my whole family have lost

their goddamn minds.

Hi!

Can I help you?

Narrator:
Gradually, it dawns on us

that the standing family is
a shadow, the flipside

of the rich, happy family's
satisfaction and comfort.

The shadow family is jungian.

They are creatures
from the happy family's ID.

Put your shoes on.

Narrator: Bloodshed comes.

Writer-director Jordan peele
brilliantly draws us

into a modern American world,

then holds up a mirror,

or makes us think
of our shadow selves.

A recent film from Korea
showed us our shadow selves.

A posh, modernist

family home in Korea.

A young teacher has arrived.

He's being shown around
by the family's maid.

He is to teach
the family's children.

The camera tracks.

It's like an architecture video.

Elite life.

But all is not what it seems.

The window in a cheap
apartment in the same city.

Socks drying.

The window's at ground level,

which means that
the apartment is underground.

As if to emphasise this,
the camera descends.

And there's the teacher
from the first clip.

But he's not a teacher.

His family is so poor that
they have forged a document

to pretend that he can teach.

Cheap furniture,
stuff stacked against walls.

Piles of clothes, cramped rooms.

This poor family is the shadow
of the rich family.

It's like they're
its underbelly,

Korea's underbelly.

And, as in Jordan peele's us,

they begin to invade
the rich family.

And as the plot twists,

a more literal underground
is revealed.

Another 21st-century film
about social corrosion.

Architecture, chutzpah,
resentment

and Hitchcock meshed

in director bong joon ho's
playful accusation.

And here, in Tunisia, is an
even more stark confrontation

between poor and rich.

A naked, grieving ex-soldier

who has run away from conflict,
cities, buildings, clothing.

He has nothing left.
He's gasping for air.

Man gasps

Then, this.

More than 50 minutes
into the film,

we suddenly meet his opposite.

She's rich, clothed, groomed,
sleek, bright,

in a pink upholstered chair.

But the camera pulls away from
her perfection, her control.

Soon, they will meet.

Their lives will intertwine.

Those opposite identities
will eclipse each other.

The Romanian film tracked us,
accused us.

Us and parasite and tlamess
were cinematic invasions.

Mati diop's atlantics is
also about invasion,

also about something
getting inside us.

It's set in Senegal.

It has a velvet texture,
somnambulant.

Near the start of the story,

we see young people escaping
unemployment,

leaving Senegal by sea,

heading for Spain,

hoping for a new life in Europe.

One of them is souleiman.
He doesn't return.

This is a policeman.

He's possessed by souleiman,
invaded by him.

The cop doesn't trust himself
when he's possessed.

A touch of cinematic gothic.

A new way of looking
at the migrant crisis,

wholly rooted in west Africa.

This gorgeous Irish animation
had some similar ideas.

Dad, look!

A young girl drowned at sea,

but has now become a selkie,
a seal.

A lovely possession.

She's central, transfigured,

in gorgeous shades of Amber.

The animated Irish girl
had tragically died,

but the film has some optimism

because it imagines
not so much an invasion,

but a transformation.

She is glowing.

No. No, please, wait.

Please don't.
Please don't take her from us.

We are home.

Ryan coogler's black panther
was glowing too.

Wakanda,

an ancient nation
in the film's story.

Aerial shots like we've seen

in many conventional films
about Africa,

but in these, a spaceship
is waved at by sheep herders.

Pre and postmodern worlds
in Harmony.

This never gets old.

Narrator: Then, this.

A digital interface,
a curtain pulled back

to reveal a kind
of Hong Kong, a mythic city,

afro-futuristic,

buildings with the hint
of Mali architecture.

A euphoric challenge

to how outsiders
usually see Africa,

as third world, underdeveloped.

Instead of the victim narrative
of Africa,

here is a founding myth,
a paradise lost.

This woman finds
a paradise lost.

She looks different
from other people.

She's never understood
who she is or what she is.

Then, there's a fox
at her window.

It's like she's looking
at a movie screen

or a mirror.

She's been marginalised
all her life,

and sees herself as a fox.

Woman laughs

the joy of that discovery.

Laughter

she meets a man who's like her

and their young hearts run free.

He's fox-like, too.

They don't need to pretend
that they're like other people.

They plunge.

They laugh

woman shrieks joyfully

the lake seems to be steaming.

Ali abbasi's film has
strong echoes

of this provocative beauty,
freaks,

made more than 80 years earlier.

Music and singing

man plays harmonica

a forest dance.
People shunned by society.

Dappled light.

They sing

but then, they run.

The conventional world
is coming.

Man: Don't you know trespassing
is the same as stealing?

Oh, I'm sorry, monsieur.

Is family a paradise lost,

especially after you leave it?

When we migrate, do we carry
our families within us?

Lulu wang's film the farewell
was about this.

Nai Nai, a family's matriarch,

is reading the result
of her medical tests,

her family listening,
lined up like a frieze.

They've doctored the results.

Nai Nai has a terminal illness.

Then, the family in slow motion.

In the middle, with long hair,
granddaughter billi,

who lives 13,000km away
in New York,

and hates the deception
of Nai Nai.

To her right, with white hair,
Nai Nai's sister,

whose husband has worked
away from home for years.

To the left of billi,
her cousin and his fiancee.

Nothing like a good wedding
to bring people together,

to collapse distance, to put
them all in the same frame.

The slow reservoir dogs walk.

But then, this.

Billi is isolated now.

She's talked to her uncle

about Chinese
collective identity

versus American individualism.

Is her identity her own
or part of the family web,

the family worldwide web?

Is it inside her or outside?

You could ask the same thing

of these children in Bosnia.

Their parents lived through war
and ethnic cleansing.

The adults saw atrocities.

Will these kids inherit
the trauma

or will they look ahead?

Are they closed or open?

Are their eyes wide shut?

Man speaks Japanese

A manual labourer father

and someone we presume
to be his daughter, in Japan.

The camera pulls back.

They're enjoying the night,

the croquettes
they've just shoplifted.

Then...

A lonely girl,
glimpsed through a gap.

Then, the gap in reverse angle.

Then, this remarkable cut.

A house even more cluttered

than the poor family's house
in parasite.

A shot that echoes
a scene like this,

in Japanese director
yasujiro ozu's film

early summer.

Long lens, flattened imagery,

a screen on the left.

A family composition, contained
within squares and lines.

Woman speaks Japanese

man speaks Japanese

and there's the girl.

They've stolen her.

Why? Isn't that a crime?

A reverse angle, now,

even more cluttered.

The whole film is like
a reverse angle.

It looks at family in a way

that's the reverse
of what we'd expect.

They speak Japanese

we learn that a lot
is not what it seems

in this cosy-looking
family home.

We're looking at the heart
of something,

a film with a heart,

a family with a strong identity,

but an identity
based on stealing, on crime.

A family imagined,

a story of identity told.

Woman speaks Japanese

Another family imagined.

Another cramped apartment.

A Russian boy
with behavioural problems.

His mother already has
five kids,

but has now adopted him,
her sixth.

Money is scarce,

but human contact isn't,

love isn't.

The camera, near the floor.

She cradles his feet.

And then,
to her oldest daughter.

A good, loving family,
like a cat's cradle.

Humming

another loving family,
humming together.

Two hands, picking,
a girl's and a man's,

as if they're the one person.

Tilt up.

They hum

they live in the forest,
away from modern life,

this girl and her dad.

They're like fish in water.

Thank you.

Whittling.

Dad, this wood is really good
for feathering.

That's really nice work.

Narrator: Working together.

They own little.

They survive in secret,
but in Harmony, here in Oregon.

Soon, we learn that he fought
in Iraq and has PTSD.

In trying to live this way,
they are playing with fire.

Man blows gently

a film as generous and precise
as a Dolly Parton song.

This section of our film,
about who we are,

about how recent cinema
has looked inside us,

began in Romania.

Then, we went to america,
Korea, Africa,

Japan and Russia.

With each move,
the picture lightened.

Optimism entered the frame.

Now, we're in Italy
in a film set in the 1970s.

An old-fashioned farm,
a thunderstorm.

A kindly young man, who always
does what people ask, lazzaro,

stands in the rain, oblivious,

like the geese.

A panic to take in the corn.

We see the round edges of
the image, like an old photo.

Two girls try to get lazzaro
to shelter,

but he seems in another world.

Then, this remarkable scene.

Hands touch him,
like he's sick or a Saint.

We've seen him bossed around,
but he doesn't complain.

Woman speaks Italian

in Alice rohnnacher's film,

he's the goodness in people.

A timeless thing,

literally so, as we see later.

He's frank-blank, in a way,

but purer and less troubled

than Michael fassbender's
character.

He's more like
Terence stamp's character

in pier paolo pasolini's
teorema -

a kind of visiting angel.

So, when we went to the movies
in the last decade,

we saw that we were racist,
haunted,

socially divided, mythic,

familial, inventive or angelic.

An upwards sliding scale.

Two more films took the question

of identity in cinema
further still.

Firstly, this one.

A trans woman, Marina, in Chile.

Her lover has died.

Society his disrespected her,
buffeted her,

blamed her.
We track as she walks alone.

The wind of change seems
to be getting stronger.

Music: Sposa son disprezzata
by geminiano giacomelli

and then, this.

Is the world tilting
on its axis?

Is her struggle invisibly
becoming more uphill?

Cold light on her face now.

A painful film, which seems
to be about her trans identity,

but is really about Chile's.

And Ava duvernay's documentary

about the 13th amendment
to the American constitution,

talks about another type
of transition.

She uses a montage of voices,

experts filmed in striking
settings, to tell her story.

How black people in america
were arrested,

and how they turned that

from a badge of shame
into pride.

Man: I think that one
of the most brilliant tactics

of the civil rights movement

was its transformation
of the notion of criminality.

Because for the first time,

being arrested was
a noble thing.

Being arrested by white people

was your worst nightmare.

Still is,
for many African-Americans.

So what they did, they
voluntarily defined a movement

around getting arrested.
They turned it on its head.

Man: If you look at the history

of black people's various
struggles in this country,

the connecting themes is
the attempt to be understood

as full, complicated
human beings.

We are something
other than this visceral image

of criminality and menace
and threat

to which people associate
with us.

Shouting and barking

Duvernay's film showed
what it's like

to be attacked, belittled,
invisible.

The Indian film ship of theseus
talked about disappearing

in a very different way.

A jain monk,
in a theatrical beam of light.

He's dying.

He has liver cirrhosis,
but refuses a transplant.

An acolyte visits.

Acolyte: I got you a gift.

Alphabets.

Narrator: In the first section
of the film,

a young woman with eye disease

had been given
an eye transplant.

The young guy in this section
reads from the book,

and we begin to realise

that transplanting is the theme
of the film.

The movie's title,
ship of theseus,

refers to a thought experiment.

If, bit by bit, the timbers
of an old ship are replaced,

until none of the original
material remains,

is it still the same ship?

Or has it a new identity?

It gives me some kicks, though,

to know that a part of me was
a part of an animal once.

A flame, a star,
a part will become mineral,

grow in a plant, sprout in
a fruit, get pecked by a bird.

Every atom of my body will be
recycled by the universe.

You think you're a person,
but you are a colony,

a microcosm, which has
ten times more bacteria

in its body than does
human cells.

Have we changed
beyond recognition?

Did the emptiness
that came in 2020,

the deserted streets,
underpasses, airports,

change things?

We watched far more movies
under lockdown.

More romcoms, more Netflix,

more tcm or Amazon prime,

or national broadcasters,
or other streamers,

and more classic films we love.

And maybe some films
that extended

the language of cinema, too.

And when public life returned,

we marched to the movies again.

We couldn't wait to see
things bigger than life.

Shots and cuts,
innovation and desire.

After wearing those face masks,
cinema looked different.

Social distancing seemed
to electrify space...

As if it was a tracking shot...

A travelling shot.

Like this one.

We tried to look at life anew,

in someone else's arms.

Movies helped us see again.

Cities, nights, movement,
fleeting love.

We remembered
the excitement of movies

from the last 13 decades...

In scenes like this.

Swing. A cartoon magazine frame.

Three characters
from three worlds.

Spider-ham: Did that feel
like a cartoon?

Spider-ham blows raspberry

a moment of slowness, manga,
then acid colours.

They grunt

Gwen!

Narrator: Will the image
peel apart?

Trains, buildings, cars.
A New York City acid soup.

- I like your suit.
- Thanks, I made it myself.

Then, a world of dots.

Inventiveness too fast to clock.

So we're swirled, spun.

Buckle up, guys.
This is going to take a while.

Maniacal laughter

horn blares

all right, never mind.
Let's end this thing.

Spider-man:
Into the spider-verse

was cinema on the rinse cycle,
the spin cycle.

But then, we come across
a new cinema,

a cinema like this one
in New York,

and we hope that the cultural
pessimists are wrong.

Even when times are tough,

especially when times are tough,

we'll want to go
into the spider-verse.

In the last decade,

the spider-verse, cinema,
has grown.

More people are making movies,

more types of people,
with more points of view.

These are our habitats,

we creatures of the dark.

These are the places
where our lives are relit...

Where we see fantasy
and feel fear...

Where we come across the movies.

Voyeurism, framed.

As in holy motors, cinema,
the thing we love, is close by.

It's the room next door.

And in that room, it's Saturday,

always Saturday.

Cemetery of splendour again.

The soldier and the caring lady
have just woken up.

The coloured light still glows.

And his breathing.

The light goes blue.

What have we been digging for?

What are they looking at?

How do they see the world?

They're the audience of
the next decade, and the next.

And maybe the film-makers, too.

Music: Rebuild by Jordan gagne