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Yep, another great episode of The Story Of Film this week from Mark Cousins. As he looks at the last great decade of celluloid, before digital took over, this week’s Asian filmmakers include Hong Kong’s Wong Kar-wai, Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Tsai Ming-liang (Goodbye Dragon Inn, The Wayward Cloud) and the start of Japan’s J-Horror scene with cyberpunk director Shinji Tsukamoto (Tetsuo), Takashi Miike (Audition, 13 Assassins) and Hideo Nakata (The Ring, Dark Water).

Catch the full episode while you can.

Mark Cousins’ The Story Of Film series this week features a section on the blossoming Chinese cinema scene of the 80s before the incidents around Tian’anmen crackdown. He looks at the work of Tian Zhuangzhuang (The Horse Thief), Chen Kaige (Yellow Earth) and Chen’s cinematographer gone director in his own right, Zhang Yimou (Raise The Red Lantern, House Of Flying Daggers).

(Hey, has anyone noticed how hard it is to get a decent copy of some of these films?)

You can view the whole episode here, but for a limited time only.

(No, really!)

For those of us old enough to remember Mark Cousins when he had the unfortunate task of stepping into Alex Cox’s luke warm shoes hosting BBC2′s Moviedrome, his series on More 4 – the appropriately titled The Story Of Film: An Odyssey – has been an absolute delight.

He’s taken a global view of film throughout, encompassing not only America and Europe, but Asia, Africa, South America and the Middle East, including the work of Yasujirō Ozu, Nagisa Oshima and Satyajit Ray, but the latest episode is a real treat for fans of Asian action movie fans, as he looks at the (literal) impact of Hong Kong cinema on film in the 1970s and 80s, particularly King Hu, Bruce Lee, Tsui Hark, John Woo and Yuen Woo-ping (as well as an interview with Stanley Kwan)…

(Even if he does seem to confuse Yuen Biao with Jet Li in a clip from Once Upon A Time In China – oh Mark, wtf?)

Catch the full episode here on 4OD while you can.

We don’t normally post news stories about TV listings, but there’s a few films that caught our eye this week and are well worth setting your PVRs for. (And yes, you will need to unless you plan on staying up well after midnight!) There’s a rare chance to see Nandita Das’ Firaaq tomorrow at 1.45am on Channel 4 (Monday 13 September), Johnnie To’s impressive Election is on Film4 on Tuesday 14 September at 1.20am, and Takeshi Kitano’s Zatoichi is on Film4 on Thursday 16 September at 1.10am.