And Jeremy managed to persuade the Chinese authorities to allow them to film on location in China, which was really quite a feat at that time, wasn't it? We're talking the 1980s.

Absolutely.

I mean, it's hard to imagine how he did it, but there was something deeply persuasive about Jeremy Thomas himself.

You know, he was trusting and trustworthy.

His word was his bond.

So I'm sure the Chinese could see they were dealing with a man of integrity who would respect Chinese culture and architecture and traditions.

And that story was about a world shift from the imperial era.

Which were the films Jeremy Thomas was most proud of, would you say?

What if he were able to tell his story in the first person? Celebrated filmmaker Mark Cousins takes us on such a journey, providing new insights on one of the most iconic filmmakers of all time.

I just decided to watch all his films in order and try to imagine what he would say today.

I'm very low tech, so I took a notebook and I just watched each film.

And I don't know if you can see the pink notes.

Every time I saw something interesting, I made a little pink note.

And I knew I didn't want to look at some of the most obvious themes in Hitchcock.

So I decided to look at these themes.

to use an AI.

What are some of the biggest misconceptions you hear from veterinarians or veterinary team members or clients when it comes to parasite risk in cats?

Well, I think, you know, going back to the topic of heartworm, I think the biggest misconception that we see from veterinarians is they say, well, we don't see heartworms in cats.

Well, I mean, obviously heartworms are seeing you.

If I can reference what I think is a seminal study that was published in Parasites and Vectors, in 2024 by Dr. Tom Nelson, a fellow board member of the American Heartworm Society.

He demonstrated that the rate of infection of heartworms in cats is almost exactly the same as the rate of infection of heartworms in unprotected dogs in any geographic area.

That's stunning.

Now, granted, he used about seven or eight diagnostic methodologies to diagnose heartworm disease in any individual cat.

Like what's your spiel?

Mm.

Uh, and Bela Tarr, of course, did that in one of his films, and she does this here.

So it's a portrait, on the surface it's a portrait of people working in this valley, and there's a, uh, there's a, I think it's a coal mine or a steel, uh, smelting factory or something, I can't remember which.

But her use of music is really melancholic, and her, the editing sense, I don't know if she edited her own films, but the editing is associative, and there's a real s- feeling of, you know, there's a, um, Irish playwright, J.M. Synge, and he wr- he had a play called In the Shadow of the Glen, and there's a real, her film could've been called In the Shadow of the Glen.

Um, and I'm going back, I was in Bulgaria recently, and I'm going back again, um, in the autumn because The Story of Documentary Film has been bought for Bulgarian theatric release, which is very nice.

And I've, uh, I think the, the Bulgarian filmmakers are, uh, so interesting.

Uh, uh, and when you th- and then you think of, I'm sure you've seen The Mosquito Problems and other Stories by Andrey Po- Pun- Pun- Punov from 2007, and it's one of the great documentaries, again Bulgarian.

... briefly, if I can, about Sarajevo as the key location and, you know, what does that stand for, for you in that first post-communist decade?

Why were they doing that?

First of all, I dissolve to black there.

You noticed it's the only time in 16 hours that I dissolve to black, and as it were, censor, because I don't think we need to see the death of the elephant.

It does actually die.

Why were they doing it? Because back then...

Cinema was new, it was just a sense of spectacle, and filmmakers wanted to show anything spectacular, including the electrocution of an elderly elephant.

There wasn't much discussion about the morality of these things, you just pointed the camera at the fascinating world, and filmmakers were basically in all these early years just saying, look what's out there.

So I, sorry, that's a very highfalutin way of asking you, what do you make of the current slew of these celebrity documentaries?