{"id":400028,"date":"2026-01-31T04:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T04:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/400028\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T04:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T04:54:09","slug":"director-mark-cousins-explores-the-story-of-documentary-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/400028\/","title":{"rendered":"Director Mark Cousins Explores ‘The Story Of Documentary Film’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tScottish Irish filmmaker Mark Cousins<\/a> isn\u2019t afraid to think big.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s always good to aim high,\u201d he tells Deadline. \u201cI mean, we can nibble at life and take it gingerly or we can gorge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe gorges on nonfiction cinema in his 16-hour series The Story of Documentary Film<\/a>, an encyclopedic exploration of the medium produced by Cousins\u2019 frequent collaborator, John Archer<\/a>. Chapter 1 just premiered at Sundance<\/a> (it screens again on Sunday<\/a> in Salt Lake City); the Berlinale will host the international premiere of that first chapter and the world premiere of chapters 2-4.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cJohn and I, this is the third history of cinema we\u2019ve done together. And each one we embark on with some trepidation, maybe,\u201d Cousins notes. \u201cWhen you make something like this, you need a system, you need a grid, you need some kind of scheme, otherwise you get lost in the labyrinth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'Turksib,'<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Turksib,\u2019 a 1929 film directed by Victor Turin<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHopscotch Films\/Louverture Films<\/p>\n

\n\tThe scheme here, as Cousins observes in voiceover in Chapter 1, is to examine \u201cthe innovative films, the boundary pushers\u201d from the beginning of documentary (the beginning of cinema itself, actually) through to the present. He finds those boundary pushers not just in the usual places \u2013 Lyon, France, Edison\u2019s New Jersey, Robert Flaherty\u2019s frozen north \u2013 but in Palestine 1986, Spain 1912, Soviet Russia in the 1920s, and in later decades in Africa, India and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s confident audiences are looking for a compendious view of the artform, one that crosses national boundaries.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe feel that people are hungry to want to know how things fit into the bigger picture,\u201d he observes. \u201cI\u2019ve worked with a lot of young people and they want to know, \u2018Okay, we\u2019re in a political moment. Where did this come from? How does that fit?\u2019 As we know, Michael Brewer is influenced by French cinema and French cinema is influenced by Arabic cinema. So, let\u2019s tell full rich story rather than a sort of almost nationalistic sub story.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Le Repas de b\u00e9b\u00e9 (Baby\u2019s Meal)\u2019 an 1895 film by the Lumi\u00e8re Brothers. At right, Auguste Lumi\u00e8re\u2019s wife, Marguerite, stirs an empty cup of tea.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHopscotch Films\/Louverture Films<\/p>\n

\n\tCousins brings fresh eyes to the pioneering work of the Lumi\u00e8re Brothers in Lyon. A clip of their 50-second-long 1895 film Le Repas de b\u00e9b\u00e9 (Baby\u2019s Meal) shows Auguste Lumi\u00e8re\u2019s wife Marguerite pouring tea into a cup and sipping it. Except Cousins notices the teapot is empty and so is the cup. In that sequence, already we see the question arise of staging which will preoccupy documentary going forward. To what degree are documentary filmmakers tempted to fiddle with reality while ostensibly presenting a clear and unadulterated image of it?<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Lumi\u00e8re Brothers dispatched camera operators around the world to capture scenes people back home had never witnessed \u2013 the \u201croving eye\u201d as Cousins puts it.<\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t\t\tDirector Mark Cousins in Cannes<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLe Segretain\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe question is always, who\u2019s telling the story from where, when, and why. And at the beginning of documentary, it was people from wealthy countries\u2026 It was people going outwards,\u201d Cousins says. \u201cThey weren\u2019t cynical people, those first filmmakers, those pioneers, they were just trying to say, \u2018My God, look at this thing.\u2019 But we had to get to a point quite soon after that where people out there in Egypt, in Palestine, in India, got their hands on the means of production themselves. And when they did \u2014 and that was roughly from the 1950s in Africa, and then the explosion of great Indian docs in the \u201970s \u2014 when you get to that part\u2026 then the language enriches, the artform enriches.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe adds, \u201cWe don\u2019t need to be cynical or hate those early pioneers who said, \u2018Look at the pyramids and look at these exotic people,\u2019 but we can\u2019t wait to see people of actual Egypt getting their hands on the camera and saying, \u2018Look at our own story.\u2019 \u2026As we watch the story of documentary evolve, we feel these new voices, and it feels like the choir is getting bigger and wider and richer.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t\t\tMark Cousins<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHopscotch Films\/Louverture Films<\/p>\n

\n\tCousins says of The Story of Documentary Film, \u201cThere\u2019s a kind of optimism in this project.\u201d And indeed, in a still photo released for the series, the director is shown wearing a T-shirt with the words \u201cDocumentary kills fascism.\u201d That is not universally true, of course, and the series explores the work of Leni Riefenstahl<\/a>, the German director known as \u201cHitler\u2019s favorite filmmaker.\u201d Her documentaries Triumph of the Will and Olympia, visually stunning and influential to this day, were made in service to Nazi ideology.<\/p>\n

\n\tCousins says he spoke by phone with Riefenstahl several times before her death in 2003 at the age of 101. But he notes a dissenting voice of cinema from Riefenstahl\u2019s time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s another great German female filmmaker in the 1930s called Ella Bergmann-Michel, and she\u2019s doing beautiful documentaries where she\u2019s filming people looking at the Hitler propaganda with a quizzical eye,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd what we can do is say, \u2018Okay, we know Leni Riefenstahl. We can\u2019t ignore Leni Riefenstahl. We can talk about her a lot.\u2019 But at the same moment, in the same place, there was another female director doing brilliant humanistic work. So, this is a bit of widening, of opening the curtain, pulling back the veil to show actually, if we care about human beings and we actually look, documentary has done such great work.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Man with a Movie Camera,\u2019 a 1929 documentary directed by Dziga Vertov.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHopscotch Films\/Louverture Films<\/p>\n

\n\tHe continues, \u201cDocumentary has been on the side of the devils as well as the angels\u2026 There\u2019s no denying that documentary\u2019s done terrible things, not only in Germany, across Africa in many ways and in the Soviet sphere as well\u2026 [But] if somebody watches the whole of the story of documentary film, I think they can\u2019t be a fascist. It\u2019s impossible because you see such nuances, ways of living around the world, in South America and Africa, et cetera.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCousins will be attending the Berlin Film Festival, but at a time of growing authoritarianism in the U.S., he made the decision not to travel to the Sundance Film Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m going to get emotional here,\u201d he prefaces. \u201cAmerica is not a great place to visit at the moment. The values that Robert Redford had when he founded Sundance Institute with others are being systematically undermined by Donald Trump and the current regime. One of the last times I went to the U.S., I went through Chicago O\u2019Hare [airport] and I was taken into a side room for 90 minutes and really asked detailed questions about my passport and why did I have a visa for China? And I think Egypt, I can\u2019t remember. And I\u2019m not brown or Black, right? So, I get an easier passage than people who are brown or Black\u2026 When your government uses language \u2014 it calls people\u2019s scum or talks about shithole countries \u2014 you just have a sense that the U.S. is not easy to get into at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCousins adds, \u201cI should say, I love Sundance. I want to be there\u2026 I\u2019ve also been outspoken. I\u2019ve made two films about the far right, Mussolini, and about Holocaust deniers. And I don\u2019t just want to get to the U.S. and then be rejected. We are honored, John [and me], that our film is in Sundance, and we passionately believe in the values of Sundance, but we need to understand that the U.S. has become a place that is risky for those of us who are passionate internationalists.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Story of Documentary Film comes at a time when there is both an explosion of nonfiction cinema and yet significant challenges getting that content to viewers. Streamers have shown an increasing appetite for biographical films about famous people.<\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t\t\tProducer John Archer and director Mark Cousins in Cannes.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLaurent KOFFEL\/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe celebrity doc is just depressing,\u201d producer John Archer avers, adding in an apparent illusion to the new Melania Trump documentary<\/a>, \u201cSomebody gets, what, $40 million. What are they going to reveal?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tArcher acknowledges the current state of documentary distribution will impact how The Story of Documentary Film gets seen. \u201cOn The Story of Film [2011], we had Channel 4 who we were working with. There\u2019s no way a broadcaster in the UK wants to take on something this big [the new series]. And I think that\u2019s a shame. They have the space and they should have the breadth of imagination. For the price of one normal documentary, they could have 16 hours\u2019 history on a streamer, on the BBCI Player, on All 4, or whatever the Channel 4 one\u2019s called now, but it\u2019s probably too serious for them. And too international.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Archer adds, \u201cOne of the great things about working with Mark is that the audience is international. So, even if we don\u2019t make much of a sale in the UK, we know we [will] elsewhere, and people want to see what he does. So, it\u2019s not as big a risk as it might appear.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCousins expresses confidence in the inherent appeal of the material. \u201cI think also people want to know about the world because their time on this planet is quite short and you want to know about things, you want to know about how brilliant it is to be alive and you want to know what it\u2019s like to be in the Amazon or to be in Iran, et cetera,\u201d he notes. \u201cI think that\u2019s why the current U.S. government is completely, completely wrong about humanity because it thinks that people aren\u2019t interested in things outside themselves. But actually, they are. Before we kick the bucket, as we say, we want to feel as if we\u2019ve seen life and that\u2019s what documentary can do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scottish Irish filmmaker Mark Cousins isn\u2019t afraid to think big. \u201cIt\u2019s always good to aim high,\u201d he tells…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,149667,149668,2839,145242,65692,149669,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-400028","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-john-archer","10":"tag-mark-cousins","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-sundance","13":"tag-sundance-film-festival","14":"tag-the-story-of-documentary-film","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}