Interview with Mark Cousins, a traveller through the history of film

Picture of the movie The story of film: a new generation © Mark Cousins

 

Mark Cousins made a name for himself with his monumental work A Story of Film: an Odyssey, which is a cinephile’s bible, a 15-hour pilgrimage through the history of the 7th art. A decade later, he has marked another milestone in this exacting and impassioned quest with The Story of Film: New Generation, to be shown in Special Screenings. This documentary was made during the pandemic, a time for the filmmaker to reflect on the state of cinema over the past decade, just before everything was interrupted. Interview.    

Has it been easy for filmmakers to express their voices the way they wanted these last ten years?

The last decade has been the most creative decade. Technology has been reduced, often the camera and the lights and the editing process were so intimidating that it made it harder to make cinema. Now it’s much easier than at any time in movie history. More people from many different backgrounds and many parts of the world have been making films.

In which countries had the cinema industry grown?

Countries like the Philippines, so much good cinema was coming from there. Ethiopia also, Argentina… Many parts of the world have taken advantage of the fact that Hollywood or Bollywood are less dominant. In marketing terms, they are still dominant, but they do not own the means of production and this is good. If you suddenly realize you can pick up a camera, there is liberty in that. Some countries have really benefited from it.

This decade began after a global economic crisis and finished before a global health crisis. Did it impact the way we make films?

Cinema has always been a seismograph and has shown the unconscious fears of a population, of a nation. The economic crisis meant that cinema got scared like we all got scared. Cinema captured some of that. In COVID times, something else has happened. People watched more films in their confinement. They streamed them, they went inside their heads, some went back to the classic films. Cinema was a kind of comfort or a consolation. Cinema always reacts to whatever crisis, not always brilliantly, but it will certainly react to crisis.

“Cinema is in the world like a sunrise is in the world.”

We also heard a lot about racism and sexism in the film industry over the past few years…

In A Story of Film: an Odyssey, another film I made ten years ago, one of the first things I said was “cinema is racist by omission”. And in a film I made recently called Women Make Film, I said “cinema is sexist by omission”. Cinema has always been committing these crimes, it always did and will probably continue to do so, unless we push and push to expose the crime of racism and sexism and other crimes as well. In recent years, things have gotten a lot better. I think of a film like Tangerine or XXY. The way that gender is portrayed, that life is portrayed have got better in cinema because people who are living these lives themselves are making the films and this is very good. It is good for cinema, for film fans, we all win. Cinema has opened like a flower and opened in a way intellectually and philosophically as well. It has embraced other ways of living which it was shitty at before. There’s obviously a long way to go but it is a lot better than it was.

What’s been your favourite film over the past ten years?

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendour (Rak Ti Khon Kaen) (Un Certain Regard, 2015), Ali Abassi’s Border (Gräns) (Un Certain Regard Prize, 2018)… Also this documentary, Leviathan (2012), with GoPros on the fish. A really important film of the last ten years was Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazarro (Lazzaro Felice) (Grand Prix, 2018). It is almost like Roberto Pasolini’s Teorema, about what happens when grace enters into your life. And Atlantics (Atlantique) by Mati Diop. That was great. I admire her very much. I think Senegalese cinema is very important for the history of film and Atlantic is a very good film.

Will you continue your journey through the history of cinema after this film?

Cinema is not my work, it is my life. It is my morning, my evening, my rapture, it is everything. I make films about lots of things including cinema because cinema is in the world like a sunset is in the world. Then of course because I make movies about life, I will make movies about cinema.