The Story of Documentary Film (capítol 1)
By Kit Macdonald
It's hard to think of any public figure as relentlessly and inspiringly dedicated to film as Mark Cousins, the Northern Irish writer and director whose many works include the landmark, 15-hour documentary The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011), and the 14-hour documentary Women Make Film (2018). This 60-minute screening at Filmoteca is of the first part of a new 16-part epic, The Story of Documentary Film, in which Cousins takes us on a sweep through the form based on 30+ years of personal research.
In the opening chapter of The Story of Documentary Film, Cousins sets out an expansive, quietly radical vision of what documentary can be. From the Lumière brothers’ fleeting glimpses of everyday life to semi-staged works that blurred fact and performance, Cousins emphasises that documentary was never purely objective. This is part of a three-day mini-season of Cousins' work, as part of the 29th DocsBarcelona documentaries festival.