Archive of films What Is This Film Called Love / What Is This Film Called Love

United Kingdom
2012, 78 min

Section: Official Selection - Out of Competition
Year: 2012

In Mexico, with only three days and a budget of £10, Mark Cousins (The Story of Film: An Odyssey) managed to come up with a poetic documentary examining the essence of happiness. This playful and intimate ode to freedom of movement, creativity and trust in one’s own instincts is distinctive for its special connection with the experiences and ideas of Sergei Eisenstein, and the work of Chris Marker and Virginia Woolf.

Synopsis

Mark Cousins, whose project The Story of Film: An Odyssey is being presented at this year’s Karlovy Vary festival in the section Out of the Past, decided to make a poetic documentary examining the essence of happiness. Filmed in Mexico over three days with a budget of only £10, this playful and intimate ode to freedom of movement, creativity and trust in one’s own instincts, is distinctive for its special connection with the experiences and ideas of Sergei Eisenstein and the work of Chris Marker and Virginia Woolf. In this stirring essay on the themes of memory, landscape and the joy of hiking, viewers will not only be treated to three visual dream sequences but also music by PJ Harvey, Simon Fisher Turner, Johnny Cash and Bernard Hermann. In his typical, genuine and intuitive manner, Cousins asks where joy comes from. His wholly independent, by turns spirited and gloomy film explores the sentiments associated with travel and homecoming, and the nature of solitude.

About the director

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, who also lent his talents to the popular BBC series "Scene by Scene,” is a former director of the Edinburgh film festival, which this year world premiered his latest movie What Is This Film Called Love.

Contacts

4Way Pictures
37 Newington Road, EH9 1QR, Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 779 988 541 7
E-mail: [email protected]

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About the film

Color, HD CAM
International premiere

Section:	Official Selection - Out of Competition

Director:	Mark Cousins
Screenplay:	Mark Cousins
Dir. of Photography:	Mark Cousins
Music:	PJ Harvey, Simon Fisher Turner, Espen Jorgensen
Editor:	Timo Langer
Producer:	Catherine Aitken, Mark Cousins
Production:	4Way Pictures
Contact:	4Way Pictures

www:	www.whatisthisfilmcalledlove.co.uk

Guests

Mark Cousins

Film Director