Mark Cousins –Director of The Story Of Film: A New Generation. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
I’ve written in this space before of my fondness for Mark Cousins’ The Story of Film: An Odyssey, a mammoth, 15-hour miniseries which manages to be both endlessly informative and eminently watchable. The only problem, of course, is that it was completed in 2011, meaning that there has now been a full decade of cinema which could not make the cut. Fortunately, Cousins hasn’t stopped watching. His new documentary, The Story of Film: A New Generation, brings us up to speed through the innovations and achievements in the form over the past ten years, covering everything from Black Panther to Aleksey German’s Hard to Be a God. In anticipation of the film’s digital release (following a week-long theatrical run at the Brattle), I spoke to Cousins about the challenges of revisiting this epic work, the pleasures and pitfalls of nostalgia, and his ideal 2010s double feature. (This conversation has been edited lightly for flow and clarity.)
BOSTON HASSLE: At what point did you decide to revisit The Story of Film? Was it something that, while you were making the original, you had plans to continue it over the years? Or were you inspired by some of the developments since then?
MARK COUSINS: Pretty much the latter. Making the original Story of Film was exhausting, because we had no money, and I traveled around the world, and I backpacked and stayed in cheap hotels. So I said to my producer, “Never again am I doing that! No fucking way.” But after a long time you forget the pain of childbirth. (laughs) My producer said, “Would you do an update?” And a lot had happened, not only in cinema, but in technology and in society as well. And I thought, “Okay, I can give this another shot.” And then we were in confinement– this film was made under COVID. So I thought, yeah, I can give this a go.
BH: Did you have a sense going in of what films you’re going to cover, or what topics? Did the film guide the topics in the documentary, or was it the other way around?
MC: It was the other way around, I think. I see films all the time. I’m in Edinburgh, Scotland, talking to you now, and there are loads of cinemas close to me. I go there, and I watch films just as a film lover, as a kind of child. I don’t take notes. But over the years, when I saw things that I thought were magnificent. So many things, (like) Apichatpong (Weerasethakul)‘s work, and all sorts of stuff. And so I thought, “Oh, God, I could connect these things.” I could try to tell a story about the new innovation, the new 21st century innovation. And so I scribbled on bits of paper– there’s a bit of paper I have here (Mark holds up a long scroll of handwritten sheets stapled together) and I scribbled the names of those films on a bit of paper, and I thought, “Okay, there, there might be a film in that.”
BH: Did you learn anything while you’re putting together the film? Did you find yourself making connections during the process that you didn’t expect going in?
MC: That’s a good question. As I’m sure you know, in the edit suite, it’s the kingdom of connections. So even though I super prepare– I radically prepare– you still make connections in the edit suite that you don’t anticipate. And that’s the brilliance of it. You put two film clips together, and you think, “Wow, look at that. Look at the sparks that fly.” So for example, as you know, in the opening of The Story of Film, we’ve got two unexpected films, Joker and Frozen, and put them together. And I had planned that, so that was not a surprise. But in the edit suite you get other surprises all the time. In terms of what I learned, you know, I hadn’t seen everything, because I’m a full-time filmmaker– I’m not a critic or anything like that, so I don’t go to press screenings– so I had to inform myself about lots of films that I hadn’t seen. Everybody had told me that Hu Bo’s film An Elephant Sitting Still was amazing, and then I saw it, and they were so right. It was amazing. So I’m always learning, and I’m sure you’re the same. I feel I’m a constant apprentice.
The Story Of Film: A New Generation. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
BH: You mentioned that you made the film during the COVID lockdown. Did you find that the circumstances of the world around you affected the direction of the film at all?
MC: Yeah, I think it did. There might be a slightly melancholic quality to the end of this film, and if there is that comes from lockdown. I don’t know what your lockdown was like, but for lots of us I think it forced us into our own apartments, and it forced us back on our own knowledge of cinema and memory of cinema. A lot of us used cinema as a kind of comfort during the lockdown process. People watched their favorites, the classics. So I felt a slight sense of that when I was making this film. I am not a nostalgic, I don’t believe that the past of cinema is better than the present. On the contrary, I think that the future of cinema is likely to be better than the past. But nonetheless, there was a kind of comfort zone quality to making this picture.
BH: I liked that you brought it up in reference to Lovers Rock in particular. That for me is the film that more than anything else reminds me of that whole period.
MC: So beautiful, isn’t it? It’s so beautiful. We put that in at the end, because I had completed most of the edit by then. But then I saw that, that dancing and that erotism– the very thing we could not do under COVID, they were doing. They were dancing close to each other’s bodies. It’s great.
BH: Was there anything that you wanted to work into the film, but couldn’t quite find an angle to get it in there?
MC: Luckily, I have my scripts here so I can tell you exactly. (Picks up the sheets of paper) So I’m going to go through here– what did I strike out? The Raid 2 I struck out, so that’s not in it… Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue, I wanted to be in there… Did I put Dogtooth in there? I don’t think that’s in there… Jackie‘s not in there, and I thought I would put it in there. So there are a number of things. I tried to get all the exciting stuff in, but it’s a long film already, so I didn’t get everything in.
BH: Do you see yourself revisiting The Story of Film further down the road? I know you said that the last time around you decided you were done, but as the story of film continues, do you think you ever might revisit it to see where it goes from here?
MC: Well, part of me wants to say no, because I make films about other stuff. I’ve just made a film about the rise of Mussolini (The March on Rome). But I do kind of… it’s close to my heart, this stuff. Just today I signed a contract to make a big, big film, which will be called The Story of Documentary Cinema. There isn’t a really great, big, 10-hour history of documentary cinema, so I’m going to have a go at it. So that’s a sort of parallel, adjacent project.
BH: For one last question, I don’t know if you’re aware, but the Brattle Theatre here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just now wrapped up a run of the new Story of Film, and to go along with it they curated a series of some of the films that you feature in the documentary. If you were to program a concise series of films to understand the past decade and film, what would some of your essentials be?
MC: Well, first of all, I’m delighted. I’ve spent quite a lot of time in Cambridge because I’m an architecture buff, so I’m really, really delighted that they’re doing that. Much gratitude. I think the key film, as you can see in The Story of Film: A New Generation, is Apichatpong‘s Cemetery of Splendour. He’s sort of the David Lynch or the Jean Cocteau, or all those people who are really looking into the subsoil, the life below the life of cinema. So I would put that. I would show that every night in Cambridge. And then, maybe imagine doing a double bill of that and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. And then go dancing afterwards.
The Story of Film: A New Generation
2022
dir. Mark Cousins
167 min.
Available Tuesday, 9/20 on digital and on demand
