The Irish filmmaker, film historian and occasional film critic Mark Cousins has made films about films (at times to some controversy), and films about cities. I am Belfast, which he presented at the 50th Karlovy Vary, is one of the latter: dedicated to his home city of Belfast, it is a loving and somewhat experimental journey through the city and its history.
A Story of Children and Film Written by Mark Cousins Directed by Mark Cousins 2013, UK A Story of Children and Film is the follow-up to documentarian Mark Cousins’ epic 15-part The Story of Film, his love letter to cinema that’s generally considered a masterwork effort and a radicalized rewrite of cinema history in a …
In his latest project, Mark Cousins treats us to a broad and sweeping analysis of the ways in which children are captured in film. His starting point is a candid home video of his young niece and nephew, Laura and Ben, playing in his Edinburgh flat, which enables him to identify some of the archetypal representations of children in film. It takes the form of a personal cine-essay, using spontaneous connections and free association to build affinities between the most disparate of films and work towards a kind of conclusion. Drawing on extracts from 53 films from around the world, Cousins proves once again to be a knowledgeable and insightful commentator, a true cinephile of extraordinary scope.
What Is This Film Called Love? Written and directed by Mark Cousins UK, 2012 Mark Cousins’ latest film follows his tremendous fifteen hour epic The Story of Film: An Odyssey, but is a polar opposite work from that documentary in terms of scale and ambition. Indeed, the creation of What Is This Film Called Love? …