Mark Cousins, too, visits Karlovy Vary gladly and often. This year as a jury member of the main competition and as director of the documentary The Eyes of Orson Welles in which he presents the famous director, whose name he has tattooed on his arm, through his sketches. “Welles was almost annoying in how great he was. There are so many films and books about him already, that I didn't even want to make another one. But I see him as my cinematic father. I don't just have his name tattooed on my arm, I also bought his shoe on eBay, which I will show to you, now, complete with its orthopaedic insole. That's proof of how obsessed with him I am. So, I decided to make the movie and try to say something new,” Cousins explained.
During the discussion after the film, Cousins said that Welles’ sketches will first go on display in Edinburgh this August. He also confessed what questions he would pose to the director if he could have a beer with him: “Why did he leave Rita Hayworth? Why did he lead such an expensive life-style when he had a hard time financing his movies? Why was he so fascinated by autocratic giants?” Cousins conceived his movie as a kind of letter addressed to Welles. “I wanted it to seem more intimate, personal and less objective,” he explained. “I was captivated by his lust for life and his movies intoxicated me even when I was a child, before I could understand them,” Cousins said as an answer to another question. When asked to name a comparably genius director, Cousins recalled the recently-deceased Ukrainian director Kira Muratova.
