Mark Cousins (filmmaker)
Mark Nathaniel Cousins is a Northern Irish director and writer. A prolific documentarian, among his best-known works is the 15-hour 2011 documentary The Story of Film: An Odyssey.
Early life and education
Born in Coventry, England, Cousins was raised in Northern Ireland, moving with his family from Belfast to Ardglass and then to Antrim, while attending St Louis Grammar School in nearby Ballymena. This background is still reflected in his distinctive, lilting Northern Irish accent, which he has said people often recognize before they recognize his face. The twin son of a mixed Catholic–Protestant marriage, he has described his upbringing as marked by class awareness and the tensions of The Troubles, recalling having to stay overnight at school during the 1974 Ulster Workers' Council strike “in case those bad people got us.”He has reflected that the timidity he connected with his Northern Irish, working-class upbringing made it hard to consider calling himself a creative person, but that he eventually shed that constraint and grew much freer in claiming a creative identity. At the same time, he has also spoken about how traces of class awareness have stayed with him, describing how certain spaces can still feel marked by middle-class norms. His class position and being “a skinny little arty-brainy boy” marked him as a target for bullies, a common experience in the hierarchical environment of the time. The bullying stopped when he was 16, after one of the most popular boys in school told others to leave him alone.
He has said that he had stopped believing in God by the time he did his A-levels in 1983. His art teacher, Heather McKelvey, introduced him to modernism and creative expression in a way that offered him “something else to believe in,” opening “a little door in my head which has never closed” and giving him the confidence to see creativity as a lifelong pursuit. He later moved to Scotland to study, escaping the cultural and political limitations of Northern Ireland at the time, and graduated from the University of Stirling in film and the visual arts in the mid-1980s.
Career
Cousins interviewed famous filmmakers such as David Lynch, Martin Scorsese and Roman Polanski in the TV series Scene by Scene. He presented the BBC cult film series Moviedrome from June 1997 to July 2000. He introduced 66 films for the show, including the little-seen Nicolas Roeg film Eureka.In the 1990s and 2000s, Cousins interviewed directors, producers, and actors including Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Tom Hanks, Sean Connery, Brian De Palma, Steve Martin, Lauren Bacall, Jane Russell, Paul Schrader, Bernardo Bertolucci, Kirk Douglas, Jeanne Moreau, Terence Stamp, Jack Lemmon, Janet Leigh and Rod Steiger.
In 2009, Cousins and Tilda Swinton co-founded the "8/2 Foundation". Together they also created a project where they mounted a 33.5-tonne portable cinema on a large truck which was physically pulled through the Scottish Highlands. The travelling independent film festival was featured prominently in a documentary called Cinema is Everywhere. The festival was repeated in 2011.
Cousins's 2011 film The Story of Film: An Odyssey was broadcast on Channel 4 as 15 one-hour television episodes on More4, and later, featured at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. In September 2013, it began to be shown on Turner Classic Movies. Drawing on its exhaustive film library, TCM complemented each episode with relevant short films and feature films ranging from the familiar to the rarely seen. TCM received a 2013 Peabody Award "for its inclusive, uniquely annotated survey of world cinema history".
What Is This Film Called Love?, an experimental self-shot travel diary in which Cousins spends three days exploring Mexico City, was a spontaneous project that grew out of exhaustion after completing The Story of Film. It was shot on a camera he got from his long-time partner Gill and its entire budget of was spent on laminating the photograph of Sergei Eisenstein, which he addresses throughout the film. Cousins considers it something entirely opposite to his previous work. Guy Lodge in Variety dismissed it as a "whimsical travel diary" and a "fatuous vanity project", while Jessica Kiang in The Playlist described watching it as a deeply personal experience that she found unexpectedly affecting, though acknowledging it is "undoubtedly not for everyone" and could strike others as "pretentious" or "amateurish."
A similar production approach was made in Here Be Dragons, which begins as a short trip to Albania to attend the 13th Tirana International Film Festival but pivots to focus on the deteriorating state of the Albanian film archive and the urgency of its preservation. In it Cousins repurposes footage from the archive and intercuts it with that of his own wanderings to highlight the country's cinematic heritage. Produced on a micro-budget of £10,000, it was shot and edited over the course of nine days. Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter described it as "a fascinating subject squandered with too much directorial self-indulgence", while Time Out called it "another thoughtful meditation on our emotional and political relationship to the screen". Charel Muller of Cineuropa noted that whether viewers enjoy it "depends very much on your personal opinion of Cousins."
6 Desires: DH Lawrence and Sardinia follows Cousins on a road trip through the island inspired by the writer’s 1921 visit, continuing his series of travel-based essay films that mix personal reflection with observations on place and history. In Life May Be Cousins turns his usual solo style into a dialogue by structuring it as a series of video letters exchanged between him and Iranian director and actor Mania Akbari. The correspondence contrasts Cousins' travel-based reflections on art and politics with Akbari's accounts of exile and illness, which The Guardian's Andrew Pulver judged "intriguing", noting that its "intensely felt passion" also carried "a sense of self-advertisement."
A Story of Children and Film received positive reviews from multiple critics, with Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian calling it "entirely distinctive, sometimes eccentric, always brilliant".
Cousins subsequently wrote and directed I Am Belfast, in which the city is personified by a 10,000-year-old woman. Portions of the film in progress, with a score by Belfast composer David Holmes were screened at the 2014 Belfast Film Festival.
Cousins took an axe to his own film Bigger Than The Shining after screening to a live audience at the 2017 International Film Festival Rotterdam, with the intention of never screening it again; he said private viewing links still existed but urged their holders to delete them.
Cousins is the co-artistic director of Cinema China, The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams, and A Pilgrimage, with Tilda Swinton. Together with Antonia Bird, Robert Carlyle, and Irvine Welsh, Cousins is a director of the production company 4Way Pictures. Between 2001 and 2011, he wrote for Prospect, and now writes for Sight & Sound and Filmkrant.
Cousins was appointed honorary professor of the University of Glasgow in 2013, as well as being awarded honorary doctorates at both the University of Edinburgh in 2007 and University of Stirling in 2014.
Cousins is a patron of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and previously acted as both a programmer and director of the festival.
Cousins chairs the Belfast Film Festival, and is a board member of Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Festival. He was a member of the Audentia Award jury at the 42nd Göteborg International Film Festival in 2019, as well as member of the Official Competition jury at the 53rd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2018.
In 2019, Cousins was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
In 2021, he was on the jury for that year's BFI London Film Festival.
His film The Story of Film: A New Generation was first screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021.
Personal life
Cousins has been in a long-term relationship with psychotherapist Gill Moreton, whom he met at the University of Stirling in 1984; they live in Edinburgh.He has spoken about the importance of the body in both life and art, describing it as “the thing that makes us part of the world.” He has several tattoos on his arms bearing the names of filmmakers and other figures he admires, which he says serve as a form of embodied memory – “they left a permanent mark.”
In December 2023 Cousins was one of 50 filmmakers who signed an open letter to Libération demanding a ceasefire and an end to the killing of civilians amid the 2023 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, and for a humanitarian corridor into Gaza to be established for humanitarian aid, and the release of hostages.
Filmography
| Year | Title | Role | Format | Runtime | Notes |
| 1989 | Dear Mr Gorbachev | Associate director | TV | 60m | Directed with Michael Grigsby, ITV |
| 1990 | Gulf War: Scottish Eye | Director | TV | 38 mins | |
| 1993 | Another Journey by Train | Co-director and producer | TV | 59 mins | Co-directed by Mark Forrest |
| 1994 | I Know Where I'm Going! Revisited | Director | TV | 40 mins | |
| 1996 | Ian Hamilton Finlay: In a Wee Way | Director | TV | 38 mins | Co-directed by Mark Forrest |
| 1996 | I Remember IKWIG | Director | TV | 40m | |
| 1997–2001 | Scene by Scene | Director and presenter | TV | 24 Episodes x 60 mins | Interviews include Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, David Lynch, Jane Russell, Paul Schrader, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Roman Polanski. Shown on BBC. |
| 1997–2000 | Moviedrome | Presenter | TV | 66 Episodes x 5 mins | Shown on BBC. |
| 2005 | Cinema Iran | Director and narrator | TV | 59 mins | Shown on Channel 4. Presented by Omid Djalili |
| 2005 | On the Road with Kiarostami | Writer and director | TV | 28 mins | |
| 2005 | Faith | Executive Producer | TV movie | 102 mins | Starring Maxine Peake, Clive Russell and Jason Flemyng. |
| 2008 | First Impressions | Writer and director | Short Film | 15 mins | Shot in Northern Iraq. |
| 2008 | The New Ten Commandments: Kenny Richie | Co-director | Film | Anthology Film | Co-directed with Irvine Welsh. Shown on BBC Two |
| 2008 | The New Ten Commandments: 8 1/2 | Co-director | Film | Anthology Film | Co-directed with Tilda Swinton. Shown on BBC Two |
| 2008 | The New Ten Commandments | Contributing Director | Film | 101 mins | Co-directed of two of the ten Chapters. Shown on BBC Two |
| 2009 | The First Movie | Writer and director | Film | 81 mins | BAFTA Scotland Award Nominee for ‘Best Single Documentary’, Royal Television Society Award Nominee for ‘Best Arts Documentary’. |
| 2011 | The Story of Film: An Odyssey | Writer, director and narrator | Film | 930 mins | Shown on More4 and Turner Classic Movies. |
| 2011 | 60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero | Contributing director | Anthology Film | 60 mins | |
| 2011 | Cinema Is Everywhere | Self | Film | 86 mins | Centred on a project between Cousins and Tilda Swinton. |
| 2012 | What Is this Film Called Love? | Writer, director and narrator | Film | 75 mins | A personal film about Mexico City and Sergei Eisenstein |
| 2013 | Dear Georges Méliès | Writer and co-director | Short Film | 8 ½ mins | Co-directed with 102 children and Tilda Swinton. |
| 2013 | Apollo: Prvo ratno kino | Co-writer | Short Film | 14 mins | |
| 2013 | Here Be Dragons | Writer and director | Film | 76 mins | Centred on Albanian cinema |
| 2013 | A Story of Children and Film | Writer, director and narrator | Film | 101 mins | |
| 2014 | Homeless | Writer and director | Short Film | 10 mins | |
| 2014 | The Wind in the Trees | Writer and director | Short Film | 10 mins | |
| 2014 | The Place | Writer and director | Short Film | 38 mins | |
| 2014 | The Big Shave Backwards | Writer and director | Short Film | 1 min | |
| 2014 | Life May Be | Co-writer and co-director | Film | 80 mins | Cine-letters between Mark Cousins and Mania Akbari |
| 2014 | The Oar and the Winnowing Fan | Writer and director | Short Film | 4 Episodes x Various mins | |
| 2014 | But Then Again, Too Few to Mention | Writer and director | Short Film | 7 mins | |
| 2014 | The Film That Buys the Cinema | Contributing Writer and director | Film | 77 mins | Alongside Nicolas Roeg, Tony Grisoni, Jennifer Abbott and Peter Strickland. |
| 2014 | 6 Desires: D. H. Lawrence and Sardinia | Writer, director and narrator | Film | 83 mins | |
| 2014 | The Place | Writer and director | Short Film | 38 mins | |
| 2014 | Dear John Grierson | Writer and director | Short Film | 30 mins | |
| 2015 | Your Eyes Flash Solemnly with Hate | Writer and director | Short Film | 10 mins | About the killer of Pier Paolo Pasolini |
| 2015 | I Am Belfast | Writer, director and narrator | Film | 86 mins | Cinematography by Christopher Doyle |
| 2015 | Atomic, Living in Dread and Promise | Writer and director | Film | 72 mins | Score by Mogwai. Produced by BBC and the British Film Institute. |
| 2016 | Antonia Bird: From EastEnders to Hollywood | Executive producer and self | Film | 90 mins | About Cousin's late friend Antonia Bird |
| 2016 | Stockholm, My Love | Co-writer and director | Film | 88 mins | Cinematography by Christopher Doyle, starring Neneh Cherry and co-written by Anita Oxburgh |
| 2016 | Bigger Than The Shining | Director | Film | 83 mins | Cousins axed the film’s DCP after a screening at the 2017 International Film Festival Rotterdam, intending it to never be shown again. |
| 2016 | Eisenstein on Lawrence | Writer and director | Short Film | 9 mins | Sergei Eisenstein talks about D. H. Lawrence |
| 2017 | Storm in My Heart | Director | Film | 100 mins | Experimental film about Susan Hayward and Lena Horne. |
| 2017 | The Eyes of Orson Welles | Writer, director and narrator | Film | 110 mins | Consulted on and featuring Beatrice Welles, Executive Produced by Michael Moore. |
| 2019 | Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema | Writer, director and narrator | Film | 840 mins | Starring Thandiwe Newton, Jane Fonda, Tilda Swinton, Sharmila Tagore, Adjoa Andoh and Debra Winger. |
| 2020 | Alexander's Film | Writer and director | Short Film | 8 mins | |
| 2020 | 40 Days to Learn Film | Writer, director and narrator | Film | 136 mins | |
| 2020 | This Violation | Director | Short Film | 8 mins | |
| 2020 | Dear Paul Schrader | Writer and director | Short Film | 11 mins | |
| 2021 | The Storms of Jeremy Thomas | Writer and director | Film | 90 mins | A road movie with the film producer Jeremy Thomas. |
| 2021 | The Story of Looking | Writer, director and narrator | Film | 84 mins | Based loosely on the book by Cousins of the same name. |
| 2021 | The Story of Film: A New Generation | Writer, director and narrator | Film | 160 mins | A sequel to The Story of Film: An Odyssey. |
| 2021 | The Flowers the Fish and the Cockerel | Self / film subject | Film | 83 mins | A documentary about Mark Cousins. |
| 2022 | March on Rome | Writer, director and narrator | Film | 94 mins | A documentary about the ascent of fascism in Italy |
| 2024 | A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things | Writer and director | Film | 88 mins | A documentary about artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham |