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/