{"id":688768,"date":"2026-05-23T15:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T15:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/688768\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T15:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T15:10:13","slug":"director-mark-cousins-brings-the-story-of-documentary-film-to-cannes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/688768\/","title":{"rendered":"Director Mark Cousins Brings ‘The Story Of Documentary Film’ To Cannes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSundance, Berlin, Cannes<\/a> \u2013 the world\u2019s most important film festivals are embracing the latest work from award-winning filmmaker Mark Cousins<\/a>: his 16-chapter The Story of Documentary Film<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt Sundance<\/a>, Cousins premiered chapter 1 of the series; the Berlinale premiered<\/a> chapters 2-4 (as well as screening chapter 1). In Cannes, the Northern Irish Scottish director unveiled two chapters on nonfiction films of the 1970s.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s always good to aim high,\u201d Cousins told Deadline of the ambitious project just before Sundance. \u201cI mean, we can nibble at life and take it gingerly or we can gorge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s much to feast on in the 1970s alone and it\u2019s an international buffet.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn the \u201830s and \u201840s, there were only certain types of human beings who were making documentaries, mostly European men and things like that,\u201d Cousins tells Deadline during an interview on the Croisette. \u201cBut now by the time we get to the \u201870s, look at the great Indian filmmakers, look at the great Japanese filmmakers, et cetera. So, the story is getting more complicated because more people are telling it, but also society is dealing with new ideas around environmentalism and second-wave feminism. And so that\u2019s exciting for the documentary filmmaker. So, you ask who is pointing the camera and at what are they pointing the camera?\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'Nine<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Nine Months to Freedom,\u2019 directed by Sukhdev Singh Sandhu.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDogwoof\/Kino Lorber<\/p>\n

\n\tAmong the films Cousins examines from this era are those by Noriaki Tsuchimoto, who documented the devastating impact of mercury poisoning on people in Minamata, Japan, caused by the grotesque actions of a fertilizer company. He also highlights Sukhdev Singh Sandhu, the Indian director who made dozens of documentaries including Nine Months to Freedom, about the 1971 war in Bangladesh. Sarah Maldoror, a filmmaker of European and Guadeloupean background, receives attention for documentaries she shot in Africa and off the coast of the continent, including Fogo Fire Island. The range of Cousins\u2019 inquiry reflects the decolonization of documentary in that period, as the medium moved beyond the strict parameters promoted by Scotsman John Grierson.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'Fogo<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Fogo Fire Island,\u2019 directed by Sarah Maldoror.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDogwoof\/Kino Lorber<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s exactly a hundred years since Grierson first used the word \u2018documentary,\u2019 exactly a hundred years,\u201d Cousins notes. \u201cSo that\u2019s a nice peg in a way for this. Grierson\u2019s central idea was that documentary is good for society. If we want citizens to vote, to understand the world and vote, they need to be informed about that world. And that remained [dominant] particularly post-war, after the crisis of World War. But by the \u201860s and \u201870s, documentaries are using cinema for perhaps less obviously civic reasons, like self-doubt. Think of Kazuo Hara\u2019s portrait of his wife and lover, Extreme Private Eros [1974]. This is not a civic film exactly. This is about questions of how do human beings fail and how do they hurt themselves and other people? So, it\u2019s becoming more private, literally. And I think that\u2019s very interesting obviously and [in that era] we\u2019re asking more complex questions about the nature of documentary storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Orson<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tOrson Welles in \u2018F for Fake\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJanus Films\/Les Films de l\u2019Astrophore<\/p>\n

\n\tCousins doesn\u2019t ignore documentaries from the English-speaking and European world. Harlan County U.S.A., Barbara Kopple\u2019s classic 1976 Oscar winner, gains scrutiny. Cousins delves into Daguerreotypes, the marvelous 1975 Agn\u00e8s Varda in which she explored the neighborhood where she lived in Paris, on rue Daguerre. And Orson Welles makes an appearance for his fascinating 1973 documentary F for Fake. Welles and Varda ignored common perceptions that put fiction and nonfiction filmmaking into separate and unequal categories, with documentary occupying a lower rank. Cousins thinks that still-prevalent bias merits rethinking.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I was watching [the series] a few nights ago, I was thinking to myself, what if documentary is the heart of cinema and other types of cinema surround it?\u201d Cousins ponders. \u201cAnd I was remembering what Bertolucci used to say \u2014 that Last Tango in Paris is a documentary about Brando\u2019s face. I remember that [Jean-Luc] Godard said everything\u2019s a documentary. And I\u2019m getting more and more bold and thinking that there\u2019s something in documentary which is absolutely central to cinema itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"L-R<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tL-R Producer John Archer, director Mark Cousins, and Cannes chief Thierry Fr\u00e9maux at the world premiere of \u2018The Story of Documentary Film (The 1970s).\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMatthew Carey<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is the fifth time a film or series directed by Cousins has been chosen as an Official Selection at Cannes. Thierry Fr\u00e9maux, the festival chief, introduced Cousins for the world premiere of the 1970s chapters of The Story of Documentary Film.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou are going to see a film that is really, really extraordinary,\u201d he told the audience at the Salle Bu\u00f1uel, \u201cand that will reassure you. You will tell yourself, \u2018I\u2019m happy to be a cinephile, I\u2019m happy to have chosen cinema, I\u2019m so happy that an artist like Mark Cousins has allowed us to visit the history of the discipline that we have chosen.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the Cannes photocall for the series, Cousins wore a t-shirt bearing the words, \u201cdocumentary kills fascism.\u201d It\u2019s a point he underscores in early chapters of The Story of Documentary Film, while acknowledging that nonfiction cinema has also, periodically, been used to further the goals of fascists, as in the seminal documentaries of Leni Riefenstahl. At a macro scale, though, as Cousins told us in January, \u201cIf we care about human beings and we actually look, documentary has done such great work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe emphasized that point in his remarks after Thierry Fr\u00e9maux\u2019s introduction.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDocumentary is a kind of solidarity machine,\u201d he told audiences members. \u201cSomething that maybe can help fight fascism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat message will soon resonate well beyond Sundance, Berlin and Cannes. Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to The Story of Documentary Film, with plans to release the 16-chapter epic later this year \u201con all platforms.\u201d As Kino Lorber\u2019s Lisa Schwartz noted, \u201cDocumentary filmmakers have captured the reality of our times since the earliest days of cinema, and celebrating and elevating their work feels more important than ever in our current era of fake news and manipulated imagery.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sundance, Berlin, Cannes \u2013 the world\u2019s most important film festivals are embracing the latest work from award-winning filmmaker…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,43877,5328,75,252004,337,252005],"class_list":["post-688768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cannes","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-entertainment","tag-mark-cousins","tag-movies","tag-the-story-of-documentary-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}