Mark Cousins

The Hot 100 2011: 100-50

The definitive list of Scottish creative talent

16 Dec 2011

100: Gordon Ferris. Kilmarnock crime author makes good. The already packed Scottish crime writing field has finally found a bit of elbow room for another burgeoning talent. Joining the likes of Rankin, Brookmyre, McDermid and co is this Ayrshire-born…

Mark Cousins - The Story of Film: An Odyssey

Five things we learned about film while making the series

16 Dec 2011

I wrote and directed The Story of Film: An Odyssey [a 15-part history of cinema, shown on Channel 4], but there are moments in it, wee spikes, which still surprise me. The first is that nobody in the earliest years of the movies placed the camera as…

Whatever happened to the Edinburgh International Film Festival?

The champagne party may be over, but the EIFF may yet rise again

8 Feb 2011

Back in 2008, the EIFF seemed to be in good shape. A new June slot, a fresh artistic director in the form of Hannah McGill, and a whopping £1.88 million lottery cash investment from the Film Council, in addition to financial support from Scottish Screen…

The Hot 100 2010 - Mark Millar, Kevin Bridges and Alasdair Gray take top 3 spots

Our annual chart of the people from Scotland being interesting, successful and creative

16 Dec 2010

The Hot 100 is a list of Scots who’ve made a sizeable creative splash in 2010. It includes musicians, artists, writers, actors, fashion designers, technological innovators, shop owners, festival directors, record label heads and one mad cyclist.

Au Revoir Taipei, Honeymooner and Third Star bring EIFF 2010 to a close

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

28 Jun 2010

Sunday 27 June. The closing days of the festival are a giddy affair: you realise that, after so many recommendations and bits of buzz floating about, the EIFF has mutated into this Cloverfield-like monster: there’s beautiful people wandering around…

Interview: Mark Cousins - The First Movie

Documentary on experiment introducing the children of Iraq to cinema

22 Apr 2010

Mark Cousins most recent adventure took him to Kurdistan on a mission to spread his love of cinema. Miles Fielder catches up with him Belfast-born, Edinburgh-resident Mark Cousins has been involved with cinema in many ways. He’s hosted the BBC’s cult…

Glasgow International - Mark Cousins meets Douglas Gordon

15 Apr 2010

Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art returns this fortnight with a mouth-watering programme of work by over 50 artists in venues across the city, based around the theme ‘past, present, future’. Opening the festival, internationally renowned…

Agantuk (The Stranger)

10 Sep 2009

Indian cinema legend Satyajit Ray’s final film (before his death in 1992) receives an all too rare screening. A comic dissection of familial trust, honesty and fragile belief systems, Agantuk is a major work from a Bengali great (based on one of Ray’s…

Africa in Motion

18 Oct 2007

Mark Cousins In the 90s, when I first fell in love with African movies, I’d jump on a cheapo train or plane to London or Paris if either city was showing the classics. Films like Ousmane Sembene’s astonishing satire on impotence, Xala, or his pioneering…