Mark Cousins

Director

May 3, 1965 (61 years)

Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK

Biography

Mark Cousins is an Irish documentary filmmaker, film critic and programmer. A prolific producer and director, he is best known for his 15-hour documentary The Story of Film: An Odyssey" (2011). Cousins was appointed Honorary Professor of the University of Glasgow in 2013, as well as Honorary Doctor of Letters at both the University of Edinburgh in 2007 and University of Stirling in 2014. He is now a Patron of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Cousins previously acted as both a programme…

Filmography

7.7

The Story of Film: An Odyssey

A worldwide guided tour of the greatest movies ever made and the story of international cinema through the history of cinematic innovation.

6.0

Scene by Scene

Mark Cousins invites film actors and directors to watch major scenes in their career to date, and to talk us through them.

7.0

Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema

As told through clips from 183 female directors, this epic history of the cinema focuses on women's integral role in the development of film art. Using almost a thousand film extracts from thirteen decades and five continents, Mark Cousins asks how films are made, shot and edited; how stories are shaped and how movies depict life, love, politics, humour and death, all through the compelling lens of some of the world's greatest filmmakers -- all of them women.

7.0

The Eyes of Orson Welles

A poetic journey into the visual world of the legendary filmmaker and actor Orson Welles (1915-85) that reveals a new portrait of a unique genius, both of his life and of his monumental work: through his own eyes, drawn by his own hand, painted with his own brush.

8.7

The New Ten Commandments

The film was produced by Nick Higgins from Lansdowne Productions and Noémie Mendelle from the Scottish Documentary Institute and has 10 film-chapter directors for each of the 10 chapters of the film. The film's unifying theme is human rights in Scotland with each chapter illustrating one of the "New Ten Commandments" - 10 articles chosen from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The 10 film chapters of The New Ten Commandments 1. The Right to Freedom of Assembly - Dir, David Graham Scott 2. The Right not to be enslaved - Dir, Nick Higgins 3. The Right to a fair trial - Dir, Sana Bilgrami 4. The Right to freedom of expression - Dir, Doug Aubrey 5. The Right to life - Dir, Kenny Glenaan 6. The Right to liberty - Dir, Irvine Welsh & Mark Cousins 7. The Right not to be tortured - Dir, Douglas Gordon 8. The Right to asylum - Dir, Anna Jones 9. The Right to privacy - Dir, Alice Nelson 10. The Right to freedom of thought - Dir, Mark Cousins & Tilda Swinton.

6.5

The March on Rome

The fascinating story of the rise to power of dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) in Italy in 1922 and how fascism marked the fate of the entire world in the dark years to come.

4.2

60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero

An anthology of one-minute films created by 51 international filmmakers on the theme of the death of cinema. Intended as an ode to 35mm, the film was screened one time only on a purpose-built 20x12 meter public cinema screen in the Port of Tallinn, Estonia, on 22 December 2011. A special projector was constructed for the event which allowed the actual filmstrip to be burnt at the same time as the film was shown.

6.7

Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise

Using only archive film and a new musical score by the band Mogwai, Mark Cousins presents an impressionistic kaleidoscope of our nuclear times – protest marches, Cold War sabre-rattling, Chernobyl and Fukishima – but also the sublime beauty of the atomic world, and how x-rays and MRI scans have improved human lives. The nuclear age has been a nightmare, but dreamlike too.

6.7

My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock

Directed by Mark Cousins, My Name is Alfred Hitchcock re-examines the vast filmography and legacy of one of the 20th century’s greatest filmmakers, Alfred Hitchcock, through a new lens: through the auteur’s own voice.

7.5

A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things

One of the most important women in British modern art, the painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was a highly inspirational figure, whose work was deeply impacted by a pivotal event in her life. In May 1949, this leading representative of the modernist St Ives group of artists climbed to the top of the Grindelwald glacier in Switzerland, an experience which was to transform the way she saw the world.

6.5

I Know Where I'm Going! Revisited

Nancy Franklin was so overwhelmed by the film 'I Know Where I'm Going!' (1945) that she traveled from New York to the Western Isles of Scotland to see the places where it was made and to find out more about the people who made it. This documentary retraces her steps on a subsequent visit.

6.7

Stockholm, My Love

Stockholm My Love is a city symphony, a love letter to Stockholm, the fiction debut of director Mark Cousins and the acting debut of musician Neneh Cherry. It follows one woman's footsteps through the streets of her native city, on a journey of recovery from a bad thing that happened to her exactly one year before. It's an exploration of grief, identity and the power of architecture and urbanism to shape lives, and a celebration of the power of walking and looking to make us all feel just a little bit better. With new music by Neneh Cherry, old music by Benny Andersson (of ABBA) and Franz Berwald, and images by Christopher Doyle and Mark Cousins.

5.5

The Storms of Jeremy Thomas

Joining Oscar-winning producer Jeremy Thomas on his annual pilgrimage to the Cannes Film Festival, filmmaker Mark Cousins gives an intimate glimpse into the life of the legendary icon behind some of the most controversial and acclaimed films of all time.

8.0

The Complete Story of Film

At 18 hours and 43 minutes long, 'The Complete Story of Film' collects two epic documentaries by Mark Cousins into a stunningly expansive global journey through film history from the birth of cinema to today. The Story of Film: An Odyssey is an inclusive and ground-breaking journey through the history of world cinema and a treat for movie lovers around the globe. Guided by filmmaker and historian Mark Cousins, this wonderfully insightful 15-hour love letter to the movies begins with the invention of motion pictures at the end of the 19th century, continuing through the entire 20th century of moviemaking and concluding with the globalized digital industry of the 21st. In The Story of Film: A New Generation, Cousins picks up where Odyssey left off, returning with a new epic and hopeful tale of modern cinematic innovation in the new millennium, exploring how movies and moviegoing have evolved and will continue to transform to our collective joy and wonder.

7.4

The Story of Film: A New Generation

The final chapter of his exceptional 15-part documentary exploring the history of cinema, The Story of Film: An Odyssey. Mark Cousins builds a bridge between the “before” of the health crisis, and the “after”.

5.7

Here Be Dragons

Filmmaker Mark Cousins goes to Albania for five days, and films what he sees. He discovers that the movie prints in the country's film archive are decaying. In investigating this, Cousins begins to encounter bigger questions about the history and memory of a place. Perhaps a country whose 20th Century, dominated by its authoritarian ruler Enver Hoxha, was so traumatic, should allow its film heritage to fade away? Perhaps a national forgetting should be welcomed? Influenced by the films of Chris Marker, Cousins' film broadens to consider the architecture of dictators and the great icon paintings of Onufri. In the past, when cartographers knew little about a country, they wrote on it Here be Dragons. Albania was, for decades, one of the least well know countries in the world. Cousins' road movie meditation takes the advice of Goethe: "If you would understand the poet, you must go to the poet's land."

7.3

The First Movie

Filmmaker Mark Cousins, who was brought up in a Northern Irish war zone, travels to Goptapa, a Kurdish-Iraqi village of just seven hundred people on a tributary of the Tigris river, and tries to make a dream film about a place that is normally only portrayed in current affairs programmes. He gives the kids cameras, and they make their own little movies about war, love, a fish that goes to a magical place, and a chicken who debates justice.

6.7

I Am Belfast

Belfast, it's a city that is changing, changing because the people are leaving? But one came back, a 10,000 year old woman who claims that she is the city itself.

8.0

Another Journey By Train

Four young neo-Nazis travel across Europe discussing their beliefs and their disbelief in the Holocaust. They meet several Holocaust survivors on their journey, including Kitty Hart-Moxon at Auschwitz, where she had been imprisoned for almost two years.

7.5

6 Desires

Documentary filmmaker Mark Cousins follows in the footsteps of DH Lawrence in this dazzling road-trip through Sardinia.