The Story of Documentary Film
Mark Cousins’ own documentary practice (A Story of Children and Film, I Am Belfast, The Eyes of Orson Welles, and more) is consistently witty, erudite, and lyrically beautiful. No one is better prepared than he is to undertake this stupendous, 18-hour project than he is. Cousins’ 120-year history begins with clips from silent era giants that include the Lumière Brothers, Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North), and Dziga Vertov (Man with a Movie Camera) and ends in our own 2020s decade, where he observes that we’re in the world of “the everyday documentary” covered by 4.4 billion phone cameras and one billion surveillance cameras. Wryly, he asks, “Is life today a documentary waiting to be edited?” At one point, Cousins quotes Chilean documentarist Patricio Guzmán (The Battle of Chile, Nostalgia for the Light): “I am convinced that memory has a gravitational force. It is constantly attracting us. Those who have a memory can live in the fragile present moment. Those who have none don’t live anywhere.” We realize that in relating his Story of Documentary Film, Mark Cousins has, at the same time, fashioned an epic memory poem about the modern world. And he is helping us to survive and even flourish in it. —Larry Gross
Saturday 03
The Story of Documentary Film: Until the 1940s
Documentary Until the Late 1920s – Travelogues, Power and People
Documentary in the 1930s and 1940s – Sound and War
Sunday 04
The Story of Documentary Film: 1950s-1960s
Documentary in the 1950s – Decolonisation, Fly-on-the-Wall and Consumerism
The 1960s Part 1 – Not Willing to Obey
Monday 05
The Story of Documentary Film: 1960s-1970s
The 1960s Part 2 – More Than We Know
The 1970s Part 1 – Pathfinder
Tuesday 06
The Story of Documentary Film: 1970s-1980s
The 1970s Part 2 – Everywhere
The 1980s Part 1 – Something There Is That Doesn't Love a Wall
Wednesday 07
The Story of Documentary Film: 1980s-1990s
The 1980s Part 2 – Detectives
The 1990s Part 1 – Body and Soul
Thursday 08
The Story of Documentary Film: 1990s-2000s
The 1990s Part 2 – Breakthrough
The 2000s Part 1 – One Day in September
Friday 09
The Story of Documentary Film: 2000s-2010s
The 2000s Part 2 – Trouble in the Water
The 2010s Part 1 – Avengers Assemble
Saturday 10
The Story of Documentary Film: 2010s-2020s
The 2010s Part 2 – Beyond Borders
The 2020s – All That Breathes
Director/s
Mark Cousins
Belfast-born Mark Cousins is a filmmaker, journalist, author, and television personality. Among his documentaries are are Another Journey by Train (1993); The New Ten Commandments (2008); The First Movie (2009); the 15-hour The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011); Here Be Dragons (2013); I Am Belfast (2015); The Eyes of Orson Welles (2018), winner of a Golden Eye Special Mention at the Cannes Film Festival; Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema (2018), winner of a European Film Award for Innovative Storytelling; The Story of Film: A New Generation (2021); The Storms of Jeremy Thomas (2021); The March on Rome (2022); My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock (2022); and A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things (2024).