Martin Scorsese describes his initial and growing obsession with films from the 1940s and 50s as the art form developed and grew with clips from classics and cult classics.

Personal and profound look into lives immersed in film. These documentaries about films and culture show the medium's role in love and war, nostalgia and national identity. Cinema was born in the late 19th century when inventors in three different countries almost simultaneously developed the technology to shoot moving film and to project it. The Lumiere Brothers were the first in Paris, 1895. To celebrate cinema's centenary, in 1995 the BFI produced a series of documentaries in which talented directors were invited to contemplate their own national cinemas. The results ranged between highly personal and profoundly universal, and together constitute this collection, Century of Cinema.—X