Mark Cousins is a Northern Irish filmmaker and writer based in Edinburgh. His body of work, consisting of 25 feature-length films and six books, explores visual culture, cities, politics, walking… His 15-hour documentary The Story of Film: An Odyssey won a Peabody Award and the Stanley Kubrick Award, while A Story of Children and Film premiered at Cannes. With I Am Belfast, he created a lyrical essay film about his hometown. His fiction debut was Stockholm, My Love, a musical starring and featuring the music of Neneh Cherry. His most recent book is the non-fiction essay The Story of Looking.
A visual, poetic depiction of Belfast and its citizens, told with the love and passion of someone who left the city many years ago, but is still fascinated by it. Themes brought up in the film range from the landscapes surrounding the city, its changing architecture and social structure, to the political and personal repercussions of the Northern Irish conflict.
A Story of Children and Film is the world’s first movie about childhood in global cinema. It’s a passionate and poetic portrait of the adventure of growing up: its surrealism, loneliness, fun, destructiveness and stroppiness, as seen through 53 great films from 25 countries. A Story of Children and Film is an eye opener, a landmark film and a celebration of both childhood and cinema.
In last 120 years we have built a new world wonder, New York, and made Auschwitz. LGBT rights have been won. Ella Fitzgerald sang. This is what the sixteen hours of The Story of Documentary Film is about. Fascinated by our times, the mountain top and the valley of tears. Revolution, music, work, feminism, bodies. Can documentary kill fascism? We believe it can.
Screening of the first episode.
The screening will be followed by the masterclass “7 plans 7” with the director.
Through little-seen archive and his characteristically cinematic analysis, Mark Cousins narrates the ascent of fascism in Italy and its fall-out across 1930s Europe. Both essay film and historical document, Cousins contextualises history through the present, holding a mirror to a political landscape of a creeping far right and media manipulation.
