Out of the Past 2012 / The Story of Film: An Odyssey / United Kingdom 2011
This 15-hour documentary series can without exaggeration be labelled the film event of the season. Cousins’s suggestive "love letter” to the film medium invites us on an epic journey through the history of film. His original take on the development of the seventh art includes interviews with outstanding filmmakers (Scorsese, Donen) and, with emphasis on the importance of context, brings up unjustly neglected directors and regions.
"Made over six years, on four continents, covering 11 decades, and a thousand films.” Thus reads the tagline of the film event of the year, the 15-hour documentary project by Mark Cousins, who invites us on an epic journey through cinematic history. The author’s own renowned book of the same name served as his starting point for the film. This original look at the development of the seventh art, from silent film through the digital era, features interviews with outstanding moviemakers (Martin Scorsese and Stanley Donen, among many others). Emphasizing the importance of context, the encyclopedic work highlights unjustly neglected directors, forgotten film stars, and less conspicuous but no less significant regions. Cousins’s immense erudition and remarkable ability to trace artistic and technological connections through the decades make The Story of Film, with its numerous iconic clips, an utter pleasure for the eyes and souls of film lovers everywhere. Cousins’s vivid love letter to the motion picture arts will be screened in five three-hour segments.
900 min / Color, DCP
Director Mark Cousins
/ Screenplay Mark Cousins
/ Dir. of Photography Mark Cousins
/ Editor Timo Lange
/ Producer John Archer
/ Production Hopscotch Films
/ Contact Film Europe s.r.o., The Festival Agency, HanWay Films
/ Distributor Film Europe s.r.o.
Mark Cousins is a filmmaker, writer, curator, and wanderer. His first movie, aptly named The First Movie, took the Prix Italia. Last fall he began promoting his premier project The Story of Film: An Odyssey through screenings at numerous festivals (Toronto, Berlin, etc.) and at MoMA in New York. He is the author of the books The Story of Film (2004), Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary (with Kevin Macdonald, 2006), and Widescreen: Watching Real People Elsewhere (2008), a collection of essays on film. Together, he and Tilda Swinton manage the 8½ Foundation, which focuses on popularizing world cinema among children. Cousins is a former director of the Edinburgh film festival, which this year world premiered his latest movie What Is This Film Called Love (screened in the Official Selection – Out of Competition at this year’s KVIFF).
Film Europe s.r.o.
Matuškova 10, 831 01, Bratislava
Slovakia
E-mail: [email protected]
The Festival Agency
Kwerk, 22 Bd Malesherbes, 750 08, Paris
France
Phone: +33 6 27 86 62 21
E-mail: [email protected]
HanWay Films
8 Basing Street, W11 1ET, London
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 207 290 0750
E-mail: [email protected]
Ivan Hronec
Cinema Representative, Distributor, Festival Organizer, TV Representative
Mark Cousins
Film Director
Leslie Vuchot
Distributor, Service Company Rep.
Jana Krupičková
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