Mark Cousins

Mark Cousins

Born: May 3, 1965
in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
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 programmer and director (1996-1997) of the festival. He is a Board Member of Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Festival and a Member of the Audentia Award jury at the 42nd Göteborg International Film Festival (GIFF) in 2019, as well as Member of the Official Competition jury at the 53rd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2018. In 2021, Cousins joined the jury of the BFI London Film Festival.

Movies for Mark Cousins...

The Complete Story of Film
Title: The Complete Story of Film
Character: Narrator
Released: August 29, 2023
Type: Movie
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.
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My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock
Title: My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock
Character: Self (voice)
Released: July 21, 2023
Type: Movie
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.
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The March on Rome
Title: The March on Rome
Character: Self - Narrator (voice)
Released: October 20, 2022
Type: Movie
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.
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The Story of Film: A New Generation
Title: The Story of Film: A New Generation
Character: Narrator
Released: December 17, 2021
Type: Movie
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”.
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The Storms of Jeremy Thomas
Title: The Storms of Jeremy Thomas
Character: Self
Released: December 10, 2021
Type: Movie
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.
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The Flowers the Fish and the Cockerel
Title: The Flowers the Fish and the Cockerel
Character: Himself
Released: November 22, 2021
Type: Movie
A first encounter. At the Venice Film Festival. A second encounter. Again the Venice Film Festival. A crescendo of curiosity, wish to know and discover more. Months go by. A crazy idea. Dear Mark, can we make a documentary about you? The journey begins, Edinburgh in the background, an intimate film on the creative daily life of Mark Cousins. Director, writer, film polymath, teacher but, more than anything, Mark. Mark shows himself unfiltered, he lives his life in front of our camera, but he can’t help it, he must turn his camera on us. The subject becomes the filmmaker. The filmmaker becomes the subject. Questions, answers, doubts, truths and lies.
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The Story of Looking
Title: The Story of Looking
Character: Self
Released: September 17, 2021
Type: Movie
As he prepares for surgery to restore his vision, Mark Cousins explores the role that visual experience plays in our individual and collective lives. In a deeply personal meditation on the power of looking in his own life, he guides us through the riches of the visible world, a kaleidoscope of extraordinary imagery across cultures and eras. At a time when we are more assailed by images than ever, he reveals how looking makes us who we are, lying at the heart of the human experience, empathy, discovery and thought. He shares the pleasure and pain of seeing the world, in all its complexity and contradiction, with eyes wide open. As the COVID-19 pandemic brings another dramatic shift of perspective, he reaches out to the other lookers for their vision from lockdown, and he travels to the future to consider how his looking life will continue to develop until the very end.
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Who Is Bill Rebane?
Title: Who Is Bill Rebane?
Character: Self
Released: May 24, 2021
Type: Movie
A feature-length documentary on the life and work of Wisconsin grindhouse cinema auteur Bill Rebane, featuring historians, critics, and filmmakers, plus cast and crew members who worked with Rebane himself.
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40 Days to Learn Film
Title: 40 Days to Learn Film
Character: Self - Narrator (voice)
Released: April 10, 2020
Type: Movie
For just forty days, filmmaker and writer Mark Cousins embarks on a peculiar journey in order to explore topics as the passion for cinema and certain aspects related to making films as style, ideas, emotions and practicalities; an ambitious exploration of the universal language of cinema by analyzing pieces of work that cross every artistic and cultural boundaries.
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50 Years of the Troubles: A Journey Through Film
Title: 50 Years of the Troubles: A Journey Through Film
Character: Himself
Released: September 1, 2019
Type: Movie
The film marks 50 years since riots erupted across Northern Ireland, widely seen as the beginning of the thirty-year conflict known as The Troubles. Mark Cousins – who left Belfast at 18 – returns to his hometown to reflect on how the place and its history have been used and occasionally abused by cinema. He traces how the legacy of division has impacted on the nation’s cinematic imagination; and, in a city that once had one of the highest rates of movie-going in the UK, he scrambles around the ruins of Belfast’s once-grand cinemas.
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The Eyes of Orson Welles
Title: The Eyes of Orson Welles
Character: Self - Filmmaker / Narrator (voice)
Released: August 17, 2018
Type: Movie
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.
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Love Express. The Disappearance of Walerian Borowczyk
Title: Love Express. The Disappearance of Walerian Borowczyk
Character: Self
Released: May 18, 2018
Type: Movie
A documentary celebrating the work of Walerian Borowczyk, a director of unparalleled sensitivity, revered in the 1970s, who was later labeled as a maker of erotic movies.
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The Dream Palace: A People's History of Tyneside Cinema
Title: The Dream Palace: A People's History of Tyneside Cinema
Released: March 2, 2018
Type: Movie
In 2017 Tyneside Cinema turned 80.
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Antonia Bird: From EastEnders to Hollywood
Title: Antonia Bird: From EastEnders to Hollywood
Character: Self
Released: May 12, 2016
Type: Movie
In this new documentary, Susan Kemp explores the life and work of the great British director Antonia Bird, who died in 2013. Bird blazed a trail from the radical hotbed of the Royal Court Theatre in the 70s, via the groundbreaking early days of EastEnders and Casualty in the 80s, all the way to Hollywood in the 90s and back again. She always had something urgent to say, but her career was a long struggle to get her voice heard. Featuring many of her close collaborators, including Robert Carlyle, Irvine Welsh, Kate Hardie and Mark Cousins, this documentary is the first to examine Bird’s legacy, and to place her where she belongs – among the most important British film, TV and theatre directors of her era.
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Looking for Charlie: Or, the Day the Clown Died
Title: Looking for Charlie: Or, the Day the Clown Died
Character: Self - Interviewee
Released: January 1, 2016
Type: Movie
A documentary which explores the lives and tragic deaths of Marceline Orbes and Francis "Slivers" Oakley, the suicidal clowns who inspired Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.
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The Film That Buys the Cinema
Title: The Film That Buys the Cinema
Released: October 14, 2014
Type: Movie
A collection of films from an eclectic array of contributors commissioned to raise funds for the Bristol independent cinema The Cube.
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A Story of Children and Film
Title: A Story of Children and Film
Character: Himself - Narrator (voice)
Released: May 17, 2013
Type: Movie
A meticulous essay on the presence and representation of children in the history of cinema, in which cinematographies from all over the world are analyzed.
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Cinema Is Everywhere
Title: Cinema Is Everywhere
Character: Self
Released: October 22, 2011
Type: Movie
A documentary feature film that ties four narratives - from China, India, Scotland, and Tunisia - together with countless insights from venerable filmmakers and ordinary moviegoers. An aspiring actress in Mumbai battles to break into Bollywood; two friends in Scotland take a mobile film festival across the highlands; a young crew in Hong Kong embarks on the shooting of its first film; a Tunisian director anxiously anticipates the premiere of his controversial film at a major festival. These stories are woven together with scenes from video stores, projection booths, studios, cinemas, and slums into a vivid meditation on the power of cinema to shape our world.
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Title: The Story of Film: An Odyssey
Character: Presenter / Narrator
Released: September 3, 2011
Type: TV
A worldwide guided tour of the greatest movies ever made and the story of international cinema through the history of cinematic innovation.
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The First Movie
Title: The First Movie
Character: Self – Documentarist
Released: December 14, 2009
Type: 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.
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Cinema Iran
Title: Cinema Iran
Character: Narrator
Released: May 4, 2005
Type: Movie
Tracing the history and influence of Iranian cinema and its filmmakers.
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Title: Scene by Scene
Character: Self - Presenter
Released: May 10, 1997
Type: TV
Mark Cousins invites film actors and directors to watch major scenes in their career to date, and to talk us through them.
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I Know Where I'm Going! Revisited
Title: I Know Where I'm Going! Revisited
Character: Self - Interviewer
Released: February 22, 1994
Type: Movie
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.
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Title: Moviedrome
Released: May 8, 1988
Type: TV
Cult films receive interesting introductions from an expert, before the entire film is screened.