Productions from around the world ranging from 1943 to 2013 reveal varied ways to open a film to set the tone.

Directors discuss how to create believably in characters and interactions while telling simple human stories.

Directors detail filming a conversation; Angela Schanelec focuses on body language in Places in Cities; Cecile Tang uses the zoom as a guide through the emotional shifts in The Arch.

Scene staging originates from cinema's roots in theater; Kinuyo Tanaka uses staging to shape a scene's invisible geometry and accentuate tension between characters in The Moon Has Risen.

Directors including Jocelyn Moorhouse, Ida Lupino, Sofia Coppola, Kelly Reichart, Jennifer Kent, and others demonstrate the art of point of view, perspective, and editing.

India's great film star Sharmila Tagore talks about dreams in movies, with examples ranging from Wayne's World through experimental film to Sally Potter. Jane Fonda continues to talk about bodies.

Directors including Agnes Varda, Andrea Arnold, Marva Nabili, Pirjo Honkasalo, Marta Meszaros, and Wanda Jakubows discuss bodies and sex in cinema.

Sharmila Tagore narrates the story of home, religion, and work in movies by Edith Carlmar, Lynne Ramsay, Mai Zetterling, Liu Jiay-in, Antonia Bird, and others.

From silent movies to cinema of the twenty-first century, some films gain energy from politics such as The Enchanted Desna, Divorce Iranian Style, Strange Days.

Sharmila Tagore reveals some of the secrets of melodrama from Kira Muratova's Chekhov's Motifs to Binka Zhelyazkova's We Were Young.

Directors explore gripping scenes in thrillers and other types, including Kathryn Bigelow's Blue Steel, Carol Morley's Dreams of a Life, and Mimi Leder's Peacemaker.

Cinema as a kind of time machine as shown in the films by Lynne Ramsay, Kinuyo Tanaka, Sarah Polley, and Alice Rohrwacher.

Directors talk about how films in France, Ukraine, Britain, America, New Zealand, and Algeria reflect the meaning of life and love.

Various female filmmakers such as Kinuyo Tanaka, Caroline Leaf, Ana Mariscal, Paula Van der Oest, and others talk about how they deal with the universal subject of death.