Mark Cousins

About Mark Cousins Mark is a Northern Irish-Scottish filmmaker and writer. His themes are the inspiring power of cinema, cities, walking, childhood, archives and recovery. At the start of his career he made TV documentaries on childhood, neo-Nazism and Mikhael Gorbachev. In the mid 90s he and the Edinburgh International Film Festival showed films in Sarajevo to support its besieged citizens. His first book was Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary (“Indispensible” - Times Literary Supplement). His 2004 book The Story of Film was published around the world. The Times called it “by some distance the best book we have read on cinema.” Its latest edition was published in October 2020. His 930 minute film, The Story of Film: An Odyssey (“The place from which all future film revisionism should begin” - New York Times), played in the major film festivals and cinemas, and has had an influence on film education. Michael Moore gave it the Stanley Kubrick Award, it won the Peabody Award, was BAFTA Scotland nominated, and received other prizes. In 2021 he added a sequel film, The Story of Film: A New Generation. It premiered as the launch film of Cannes, was called “poetry in motion” by the Hollywood Reporter, and “the soul of the festival” by Cannes director Thierry Frémaux. Empire magazine called it “a poetic opus” and it was nominated for Grierson award. Cousins’ first feature documentary, The First Movie, about kids in Kurdish Iraq, won the Prix Italia. It was inspired by growing up in the Troubles in Northern Ireland and his passionate interest in the role cinema can play in kids’ lives. In 2012 he was nominated for the London Awards for Art and Performance and the Screen International award. He was guest curator at the Eye Cinematheque in Amsterdam. His next feature film, What is this Film called Love?, played in 20 countries, at the ICA in London, and was nominated for Best Director by BAFTA Scotland. PJ Harvey called it “revelatory and inspiring”. The rock band Maximo Park wrote a song inspired by it. In 2013 he completed Here be Dragons, a film about the vital role of film archives, especially one in Albania. It won the main prize in the Romania Film Festival. In the same year he made A Story of Children and Film, which was in the official selection in Cannes. He curated Cinema of Childhood, a series of 17 films which toured the UK and Ireland for a year and was supported by the BFI. He received the Visionary Award in Traverse City and the Saltzgeber Prize at the Berlin Film Festival. Then he made Life May Be, co-directed with Iranian filmmaker Mania Akbari, and 6 Desires, an adaptation of DH Lawrence’s book Sea and Sardinia. Life May Be was noted for its feminism and innovation and was called “transcendent and extraordinarily delicate”. It won the Don Quixote prize. 6 Desires: DH Lawrence and Sardinia, in which Jarvis Cocker plays the voice of DH Lawrence, had its world premiere at the London Film Festival and its international premiere at Sundance. Cousins had his first retrospective at the Wroclaw film festival. Others have followed in London, Thessaloniki, Finland and Geneva. Cousins’ The Oar and the Winnowing Fan was a takeover of the DazedDigital website. His I am Belfast was his first full feature about Northern Ireland. It was released by the BFI. Variety compared it to the great director Dziga Vertov. His BBC/BFI film Atomic, a collaboration with the band Mogwai, played in Hiroshima, near Chernobyl and Coventry Cathedral and at the Edinburgh International Festival. He curated a season of films for the Romanian Cultural Institute and made a fiction film, Stockholm My Love, (starring Neneh Cherry, released by BFI). He completed Bigger than The Shining, a secret project, showable only in underground circumstances, and wrote The Story of Looking (“Like a wise man looking at the stars”, the Guardian; “Brilliant” the New York Times). It was nominated for the Saltire Award for best non-fiction book. Cousins’ The Eyes of Orson Welles world premiered in Cannes and received rave reviews. His 2 hour, four-screen Storm in My Heart is about Hollywood sexism and racism. His 14 hour film Women Make Film premiered at the Venice, Toronto and Telluride film festivals, is narrated by Jane Fonda, Sharmila Tagore, Debra Winger, Adjoa Andoh, Kerry Fox and Tilda Swinton, and is showing in many countries. The Times called it “Exquisite, emotionally resonant and intellectually unassailable. Pure poetry.” It won the European Film Academy’s inaugural Innovative Storytelling award, and has led to the restoration of a series of films directed by women. Two more recent films are The Storms of Jeremy Thomas, about the legendary film producer – which premiered in Cannes 2021 and won the best documentary in Spain’s Dias De Cine - and The Story of Looking, in which he filters the history of looking through his own eye operation. Time Out called it “A rich cinematic journey into the art of seeing and how it connects us with culture, ourselves and each other.”  It won the Best Non-Fiction Film award at the Seville Film Festival. Cousins recently completed My Name is Alfred Hitchcock and The March on Rome, an Italian Palomar production about Mussolini and Fascism, part-shot in Cinecitta in Rome and starring Alba Rohrwacher. The latter premiered at the Venice film festival, was called “entirely arresting” by the Guardian, won the audience award for Best International Documentary in Brazil, and was nominated for a European Film Academy Award. The former premiered at the Telluride film festival. In 2022, his films were the subject of a multi screen film installation, Passé Présent Futur, at the huge Plaza cinema in Geneva, and had a retrospective at the Biograf film festival in Bologna. He premiered his first art installation, Like a Huge Scotland, at teh Fruitmarket gallery, Edinburgh, and – along with Cate Blanchette and Sarah Polley - was given the Outstanding Contribution to Cinema medal at the Telluride Film Festival. Cousins has honorary doctorates from the Universities of Edinburgh and Stirling, is Honorary Professor of film at Queen’s University, was co-artistic director of Cinema China and did The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams and A Pilgrimage, with Tilda Swinton. He and Swinton also ran The 8 ½ Foundation, a two year event which created a movie birthday for children. It was nominated for the Human Rights Award. He was chair of the Belfast Film Festival and Docs Ireland. He was recently given Portugal’s Aurelio de Paz dos Reis international award for Outstanding Contribution to Cinema (2019), and the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Outstanding Achievement Award for his work in screen education (2020). Mark’s roles in filmmaking, education and advocacy have widened and deepened with the years. He was an early adopter of small cameras and new technology to evolve a business model for filmmaking which was sustainable, international and creatively free. He has walked across Los Angeles, Belfast, Moscow, Beijing, London, Paris, Berlin, Dakar and Mexico City. He drove from Edinburgh to Mumbai, and loves night swimming.     Mark's Info https://twitter.com/markcousinsfilm https://www.womenmakefilm.net/