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Master auteur Martin Scorsese writes, directs, and hosts this compendium of the greatest works of American cinema, charting the medium's course from nickelodeon reels to digital imaging. The multipart series includes an exhaustive range of clips (supervised by longtime Scorsese editor Thelma Schoonmaker) and interviews with great directors who discuss the nature of cinema authorship and the changing role of the filmmaker. The film consists of head-and-shoulder shots of Scorsese talking to the camera and longer film clips with the director's voice-over, with Scorsese approaching the series in a deeply personal manner, speaking in terms of how films affected him as a director first, followed by the effect they had on him as a storyteller and fan. It is this intimate approach that makes the British Film Institute coproduction such an original achievement. Rather than force Scorsese to tell an objective history, it lets his fanaticism and love for the cinema shine through by allowing him to choose film clips that moved him as an individual. Various chapters include The Director's Dilemma, The Director as Storyteller, The Director as Illusionist, The Director as Smuggler, and The Director as Iconoclast.