Timeline styling

Question

I want to style a timeline in LaTeX so it looks vaguely like this but vertical (partial screenshot of a A4 landscape):

Some of the items have little thumbnails. Above the years are some events of one category and below the years are events of another category. I've seen some timeline example in another question, but none looks remotely like this.

Currently I use the timeline package, but it has a completely different look.

\begin{timeline}{1988}{2003}{1.5cm}{2cm}{11.5cm}{24cm}
    \entry{1988}{Hada/Hiller (Ohi Ho Bang Bang): \textit{The Two}}
    \plainentry{1988}{Blume: \textit{Kniespiel I}}
    \plainentry{1988}{Godley \& Creme: \textit{Mondo Video I-III}}
    \entry{1989}{Arnold: \textit{Pièce Touchée}}
    \entry{1991}{Steina: \textit{Violin Power} (\gls{LaserDisc} version)}
    \plainentry{1991}{Granular Synthesis: \textit{Pyrania}}
\end{timeline}

Answer 1

I used tikz to create the timeline and created some styles for the nodes and lines.

Result

Code

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}
\usetikzlibrary{positioning}

\begin{document}

\newcommand{\tlstartyear}{1988}
\newcommand{\tlendyear}{1993}
\newcommand{\tlxscale}{1.6}

\begin{tikzpicture}[
        upper node/.style={anchor=north west, align=left},
        lower node/.style={anchor=south west, align=left},
        upper line/.style={blue},
        lower line/.style={red},
    ]
    % years
    \foreach \year in {\tlstartyear, ..., \tlendyear} {
        \node[] (\year) at ({(\year-\tlstartyear)*\tlxscale}, 0) {\year};
    }
    
    % events
    \node (1988a) [above=40mm of 1988, upper node] {%
        Akiko Hada / Holger Holler\\
        (Ohi Ho Bang Bang)\\
        \emph{The Two}
    };
    \draw[upper line] (1988) -- (1988a.north west);
    
    \node (1989a) [above=20mm of 1989, upper node] {%
        Martin Arnold:\\
        \emph{Pi\`ece Touch\'ee}
    };
    \draw[upper line] (1989) -- (1989a.north west);
    
    \node (1989b) [below=40mm of 1989, lower node] {%
        Avid Technology veröffentlicht:\\
        \emph{Avid}
    };
    \node (1989c) [below=40mm of 1989, lower node, anchor=south east] {%
        \includegraphics[width=25mm]{example-image}
    };
    \draw[lower line] (1989) -- (1989b.south west);
    
    \node (1991a) [above=50mm of 1991, upper node] {%
        Steina Vasulka:\\
        \emph{Violin Power (LaserDisc \dots)}
    };
    \node (1991b) [below=2mm of 1991a.south west, upper node] {%
        Granular Synthesis:\\
        \emph{Pyrania}
    };
    \draw[upper line] (1991) -- (1991a.north west);
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}