18th TDF: Mark Cousins Press Conference

18th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival –

Images of the 21st Century

11-20 March 2016

MARK COUSINS PRESS CONFERENCE

The Irish filmmaker Mark Cousins attended a press conference on Friday March 18th, 2016, as part of the 18th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, which this year pays tribute to his work.

The event was moderated by Dimitris Kerkinos, who noted, inter alia, that Mark Cousins’ relationship to cinema is multifaceted: he directs, he writes scripts and he is also a film critic and a festival programmer. Answering the question of what actually separates documentaries from fiction, Mr. Cousins expressly noted: “a documentary is a film depicting the reality beyond us”. He added that “creativity is not exhausted to talking, but it is also found in listening” and also that “as the truth can be more absurd than fiction, a documentary can have infinitely more realities than fiction, equally intriguing ones”. On the same issue, he went on using a metaphor about Greece, which is an area prone to earthquakes, to talk about the tectonic plates of fiction and reality, leaning on the boundaries of one another.

For his documentary The First Movie Mark Cousins travelled from Scotland to the independent Kurdish area of Iraq, in order to record everyday reality there, beyond the stereotypes prevailing in the west about the women and the men who live in the area. He therefore focused on children, building a beautiful relationship with them and making use of the non-verbal language of games. “A film, just as a game, has certain material and physical elements to it, to which the kids can relate”, Cousins remarked. The children saw the film and “they laughed a lot upon seeing themselves on the big screen, and mostly upon the jokes we made. We had a great time, but we can’t keep in touch, because there are no telephones or mail available”, said Mr. Cousins. He also gave the cameras to the children in order to make their own films and asked the filmmakers in the area to help any one of them who would become interested in filmmaking in the future. 

Asked by the audience about his relationship with children, the director referred to his childhood, noting that he grew up with his twin brother in Belfast, in a loving Protestant family. Although he did not want to have children, he finds something charming about them. “When children want something, they usually want it right now. Even in places where the reality is tragic, children recover almost in no time. While growing up, I saw people in their 20s getting dressed in suits, becoming dull, hiding their desires and feelings. In English we say that we don’t stop playing because we grow up, but we grow up because we stop playing. I wanted to hold on to this playful spirit. This feeling of magic is easy to lose and when you start facing life scared and wary, you lose a lot out of it”, Mark Cousins stressed. And to prove his words, he put on a gorilla suit glove, which he always keeps with him, as he said, as his nephew encouraged him to put it on as a game each time he presents his film A Story of Children and Film.

Talking about his films, like Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise and A Story of Children And Film, Mark Cousins noted: “I try to work with the subconscious, where dreams or nightmares come from; I look for something that will fascinate and seduce. I try to direct the gaze of the viewer from one place to another and this is why my voice has to match the shot”. Music plays a special role in this process of shifting the viewer’s gaze. “In my films I was lucky to have worked with great musicians, such as Mogwai and David Holmes. We did not want incredible detail and depth in the music, we wanted to have points and counterpoints”, the director explained. He gave out a description, saying that first comes editing, then the music is incorporated in the film, then they go back to editing and yet again back to music. “It's like tango. You can make attractive music for a shot or go the other way around. There must be love between them” he noted.

Talking about how much easy or difficult it is to make a film about one’s birthplace, as Cousins did ??for Belfast in his documentary I Am Belfast, the director said that it is easier than filming in cities like New York, which has been depicted so many times that it has become difficult to find an original image of the city. “Belfast is not a city like that, in that sense. However, I decided not to show landscapes. When you decide what you will not do, you are left with the remaining options. I wanted to highlight the city’s dreamy perspective and the unconscious aspect, and that is why I used the lens of magical realism” Mark Cousins remarked.

As regards his major film influences, the director cited the great Japanese filmmakers of the 60s and 70s and especially Shohei Imamura, while he also made a special reference to Abbas Kiarostami, among Iranian filmmakers – on the same subject, he stressed that “it is very radical that he takes the camera away. If only it was possible for the camera and the director to disappear”.

During his cinematic journey, Mark Cousins ??found himself in troubled places and encountered challenging situations: From his native Belfast to Kurdish Iraq -where, as he explained, the director of photography was afraid to go and so he had to do the filming himself - but also, to Sarajevo at the time of the siege, when he was invited as the then director of the Edinburgh festival, he said that he was not afraid. “What I learned from the children is that although they are afraid, they still jump in dangerous situations, without concern for what would happen. You just say “yes”, and then when you go there you see what happens”, he noted and went on to add that the real fear for him is to “make a fool of himself, sound completely stupid or mess up”.

Mark Cousins writes scripts, directs and watches films - cinema is an integral part of his life... Does he ever take a break from films? “Yes. Once I took a road trip for six months, from Scotland to India, without bringing along the camera” the director said. Usually though, as he added, “when I feel tired and I decide to take a break, I end up in a theatre watching yet another film. It’s not just that cinema comments on life or observes it, it is also a part of it. It is not a thing outside life. Sometimes, I don’t even feel the need to distinguish between the two”.