THE STORY OF FILM: A NEW GENERATION - MARK COUSINS [Special Screenings]

Very excited about this one and I can’t think of a more fitting way to kick-start my week at Cannes. 

Following Northern Irish director Mark Cousins’ documentary series “The Story of Film: An Odyssey,” his latest documentary THE STORY OF FILM: A NEW GENERATION is premiering in a special screening at Cannes this afternoon. The first of the festival’s many offerings made under the duress of the pandemic, Cousins shot and edited this project in various stages of lockdown.

Speaking with Variety about how the pandemic might have impacted cinema-going, Cousins sees cinema not as a habit, but a ritual. “People sat on their sofas for a year and a half and ate pizza and watched Netflix and Amazon Prime, but that wasn’t fully satisfying for us as human beings. We want something wilder, bigger, more transgressive sometimes. We want to feel safe and not safe, feel all those things that cinema affords.”

As a self-professed history nerd and lover of documentaries that indulged in a whole lot of streaming-with-pizza binges over the last year, I agree. Vive le cinéma!