Mark Cousins

Zig At The Gig podcast

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/