This week Mark Cousins, the prolific Irish-Scottish director and critic, author of texts and documentaries on the history of cinema, is a guest at the Biografilm festival in Bologna, where he presents three of his works. His accessible style and enthusiasm have made his documentaries and essays extremely popular: above all his monumental "The Story of Film: An Odyssey" (in 15 episodes); more recently, "The Story of Looking" (2017). At 'terre di confine filmfestival', years ago, we screened his documentary “6 Desires: DH Lawrence and Sardinia” (UK/Italy/2014/85') thanks to the collaboration of Laura Marcellino (co-author of the script) and the artistic direction of Paolo Zucca.
Mark is friendly, informal, empathetic. We asked him some questions about film festivals and film education.
The following is a transcription of our conversation. An Italian translation is available here.
Q. The first question is about the article you wrote on the Guardian two years ago. You described your dream film festival, 100 movies no red carpet no VIP area and movies chosen by Amartya Sen and Dolly Parton. And projected on their bed sheets. Is there a film festival which has managed to apply a similar formula?
A. I think a lot of film festivals are quite similar, quite formulaic. A film festival should be a creative event. It’s not that you just choose films and slot them in and pick guests. You have to innovate with the form. So the festival that I heard about that I think has been the most innovative recently was in Sweden, in Goteborg, when they decided to make a whole festival with an audience of one. And they chose a health worker, a nurse, and they showed the whole festival to her in a lighthouse in Sweden.
That's exciting, that's electrifying. I think that there are so many film festivals in the world now that really, really need to innovate with. With form with atmosphere, with aesthetics, with class. That's why I've got Dolly Parton in there. Festivals should be high and low all together. They should be super accessible to uneducated people. Shouldn't be afraid of kids. Shouldn't be afraid of melodrama, but mix it up with real internet and innovation, so accessible to everybody and also spreading a message which is understandable.