Mark Cousins
@markcousinsfilm
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Story of Film/Atomic/I am Belfast/Stockholm My Love/Women Make Film/Story of Looking/March on Rome/My Name is Alfred Hitchcock/Dear Orson Welles...
Joined November 2011
More than 3,600 people died in the Troubles; millions of us grew up with them. We had the imagination to move beyond them. @Jacob_Rees_Mogg you have the ignorance, complacency, vanity + disregard to call for some of their conditions to return. How fucking dare you. Shame on you.
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Maybe first rule of film criticism: don't write about what you expected the movie to be.
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If you're watching a film in a cinema, keep your fucking phone in your bag. Fully enjoy a magic place where nothing intrudes, where your boring phone stuff is defeated by the big screen. You're more than those distractions.
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Some people say that watching a movie at home, comfort of your own sofa, is almost as good as the movies. I respect that, but I'm myself at home. Going to the pictures makes me not myself, makes me bigger than life - more agog, receptive, happy, vulnerable. I'm craving that.
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So many young people I meet who're getting into filmmaking are middle class/from uni/have family in the arts.If you don't come from those worlds, if you're working class + passionate about cinema, and wld like zoom chat, DM me.Am not offering work, just encouragement/perspective.
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On his 90th birthday, I'd like to mention how much Sean Connery encouraged me at @edfilmfest + afterwards. I was shy, working class lad but passionate abt movies. He made phone calls + said "how can I help?" Behind the scenes I saw lots of acts of generosity. And in his films.
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@SkyNews I can clearly see the faces of these refugees. You did not ask their permission to film them, Sky News, nor did you attempt to disguise them. At least some of them will be fleeing oppressive regimes. This is irresponsible. First rule of journalism - do not endanger lives.
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You make a film with love and passion. And then it wins the top prize at a major film festival. Shock and excitement. Tonight there will be dancing
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#MonicaVitti was - is - always will be - one of the great reasons to fall in love with movies.
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Spanish friends, if your election has kept Vox out of power, we love you.
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I got into movies because of the #BBC. I got into music because of the BBC. I learned about nature from the BBC.Most of my home entertainment comes from the BBC.The BBC is the best value for money of anything in my life. #savethebbc.
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54 Oppenheimer screenings here in Edinburgh tomorrow.110 Barbie screenings here in Edinburgh tomorrow.0 screenings of my Hitchcock film, the reviews of which are good. Missing #filmhouse.#Everyman? #Cameo?.Cineworld?.I will see Barbie and Oppenheimer, but a bit more range please.
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As those teaching film at uni/college/film school are having to devise new online learning content,have done a 200 min visual talk on movies. Passionate,personal. Not trying to fit into a syllabus. Might be of use/fun/stimulating-or not!.Made with ♥️:.1/2
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"Those who honour us by making Scotland their home.".A phrase from @NicolaSturgeon speech today. I made Scotland my home in 1983 - 38 yrs ago - but am still grateful/moved when such a welcome is affirmed. This should be the norm in political discourse, not the exception.
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In the new Netflix series "Hollywood", set in the 1940s, Patti LuPone's character is called "the first woman to run a studio". Alice Guy-Blache co-founded a film studio (and was its artistic director). In 1910.
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After this period of not going to the cinema, the longest in my life, I realise that big part of movie going for me is its scale. I crave envelopment in a parallel universe, the luminous spectacle, the overload, the vistas of films on a big screen.
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Lucky to have known great movie actors. But #DonaldSutherland's death hits hard. Intellectually brilliant, full of doubt about his own beauty, searching. He loved talking abt books, sex, Fellini, Jane Fonda, politics. Dazzling. Will try to upload my career interview with him.
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Have been told several times that, because I'm now a filmmaker with a nice life, I should shut up about working class under-representation .But.1 I don't forget the barriers .2 The barriers are still there.3 I have a voice now .4 Middle-class people still promote their own.
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DEEPLY shocked that @Filmhouse @edfilmfest @BelmontFh have ceased trading. My love of cinema and my knowledge of filmmaking have been nurtured in these places. Edinburgh and Scotland have long been centres of cinephilia. They must be reborn somehow.
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Why isn't there a good film programme on TV in UK?.Please don't give me usual answers (people don't watch, young aren't interested, they get info from elsewhere etc). It's needed.
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I think this is the most detailed TV interview #SeanConnery ever did about his films. Uploaded today, with love.via @YouTube.
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Donald Trump has been alive for 73 years, yet seems to have learnt nothing about life. He hasn't absorbed even the basics about science, personal honour, clear thinking, ethics or inquiry. A barely believable marathon of avoidance.
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Sad to see cinemas, film mags,etc, struggling. If you'd like subscription to @SightSoundmag, membership to your local cinema or @mubi etc for year + can't afford it, I'll pay for up to 50 of these. Especially if you're in non-developed world. Movie lovers family. DMs open. ♥️📽️
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You spend years making a film, and sort of dread the reviews.
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One of the most striking people I've ever spent time with. He leaves behind several cinema masterpieces .#TerenceDavies
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Dear international friends: If you're wondering why UK twitter has exploded with rage today it's because our govt is defending a key figure who thinks his kid is more important than others', his family is above the law, our lives matter less than his.
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This is how I feel after world premiere of my new film on opening day of Cannes. Can I drink wine now? (photo by Phoebe Grigor)
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V sorry to hear of death of film critic and writer Derek Malcolm .I often didn't agree with his taste, but he stood up for the art of cinema, supported me when I was boy Director of the Edinburgh Film Fest and helped build my passion for Indian cinema.Also he was funny.
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I seldom use dissolves in my films, and feel that few directors use them well. But this one in Aftersun - from a kind of Lawrence of Arabia to a kind of Beau Travail - felt so cinematic and elegiac to me.
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You battered and scared me for 2 weeks Covid, but - haha - I'm out for a walk now and it's a gorgeous autumn day and I can smell some things again, and I'm less exhausted and I'm going to make pasta sauce tonight. So fuck you.
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16 Yrs ago @PavilionBooks published my #TheStoryofFilm. It tried to be a bold reshaping of movie history: Ozu at centre, romantic Hollywood to one side, Africa a key voice, etc. My revised + updated version is out today. Thank you to all who have read it. ❤️ Cinema
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Movie lovers everywhere. If you have a projector, throw open your windows tonight and project this onto a wall, a cliff, a sheet, a billboard, to celebrate how #Enniomorricone made movies soar:
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Was asked again recently by well-connected, middle-class parent to meet + help their child, who wants to get into film. So many established parents arrange meetings for their kids to let get up in film. So unfair to young people with no connections.
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Why are people suddenly bending the knee to this guy?.How does he qualify for the job?.From what does his power derive?
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My films are often rejected by film festivals. Fine. There are many better filmmakers than me. But then you see some of the movies that a festival has selected. Filmmakers, film fests aren't a level playing field.
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This landmark piece of writing about dignity, violation and #DominicCummnings, by @fotoole, should be turned into a short film. 100 people, from all walks of life, each reading a line of it to camera. I'll happily co-ordinate that.
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Tonight, to show our love of cinema and our shock at the closure of Edinburgh Filmhouse and Film Festival, we did massive projections onto our city, its landscape and buildings.
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Just read another inclusion policy that (rightly) mentions race, gender, sexuality, ablism, body shaming etc but - AGAIN - doesn't mention one of the biggest areas of exclusion. Social class. I guess these things are written by middle-class people. .
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Floored by Covid. Feels like my body is a battleground. So grateful for the vaccines, otherwise would probably have been in hospital. Sorry I haven't replied to messages/emails.
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Today at the famous phone box in Powell & Pressburger's I Know Where I'm Going. Have been coming here for decades (and made a doc about the movie) but always feel the romantic cinematic tingle. Great that @BFI is bringing the film back 1/2
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Full year of filming ahead. My most personal film, and one about a hero of mine. Low or no budget. Daunted, sleepless nights, anticipating images, fear of failure and, of course, the ongoing tingle of making things.
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Finally announced: @tcm's vast season of films directed by women. They're screening all autumn. A huge USA TV event. Thrilled.
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Fact that Edinburgh's beloved Filmhouse and Film Festival have ceased trading today has winded us in this city. But it's also probably a warning to other cities and communities. Please don't take your cultural cinemas for granted. Please treasure them.
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It's my birthday. If you insist on buying me a present, I'll go for this mountain lodge. Thank you.
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I've been to cinemas as often as I can since re-openening. All well distanced + feel very safe to me. Moreso than many other public places. People wear masks,closed alternate rows of seats,clear signage,sanitiser. If you can go to a shop you can go to the pictures. #lovecinemas.
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If you teach film at film school/uni/college, virus might be forcing you quickly to devise extra online learning modules. As small help with this extra workload, in next weeks I hope to put online an open-source 2-3 hr visual survey of film style+content. 1/2
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Cherry pickers near Belfast docks this morning. Each time I pass them I imagine they're Hollywood cranes. Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse are dancing. My mum died this morning so am on a long walk. Lots to think and feel. Walking so good for both.
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You work for years on something, unsure what the reaction will be.
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Some actors, often powerful ones, make bad choices about which directors to work with. #KrisKristofferson?.Dennis Hopper.Scorsese.Sayles.Peckinpah.Cimino.Guillermo Del Toro.Linklater.Todd Haynes.Pakula.Miguel Littin.James Ivory.Tim Burton.And he was loved by his colleagues.
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Politicians who think your country is exceptional or the greatest - your ego dream is over. Wake up. Listen to and work with the rest of the world.
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He has deleted this, but that he tweeted it is shocking. John Taylor, shame on you. Distressing that people from my part of the world can type these words or think these ideas. And they governed us. Disappear from public life. Don't infect us with your ignorance.
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So Donald Trump will visit UK 26-27 Feb 2018? Let's astonish the world's media with our protests. Let's wear black arm bands like the suffragettes wore for the funeral of Emily Wilding Davison.
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Billy Wilder, Orson Welles, Ernst Lubitsch and so many of the great filmmakers would have hated that just published letter about Jonathan Glazer. They were menshes.
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Shooting my new film in Cinecitta, the legendary Rome film studio where Fellini and so many great directors worked. I like my job.
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Director of Suicide Squad says Jaws is his fave film but he's not seen it on big screen. Of course. Often we've never seen great movies in cinema. But when he does it'll be more spacious, immersive,formal,scary, dominant,surreal,luminous.poetic,present tense,mythic.And exciting.
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"Very complex circumstances". Yeah, that's right, your circumstances were very complex, but ours weren't. Powerful people have more complex lives than ordinary people. Your anxiety is greater than others'. Yeah. #DominicCummngs.
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I feel joy when I see the film world changing, when new voices appear and are acclaimed. But then i look them up and too often those people had elite educations or privileged access. It's great that they're here, but let's not pretend that the playing field is level.
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#ZoneofInterest - one of the most aesthetically bold, morally serious movies of our time - is sold out tonight in my local multiplex. It's almost as if film culture is on the rise. ❤️🎥.
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Irrfan Khan, an actor who enriched the movies, crossed boundaries, had range and dignity. He will be so missed.
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If, in the past, you think you've seen Cate Blanchett hit 100 on the vampometer, you've got another think coming. #NightmareAlley
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Thatcher leaving. An photo etched in the minds of all whose lives were damaged by her. Will there be an equivalent Trump moment, image, lightning strike?
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British prime minister #RishiSunak just made a speech against extremism.His party's government ministers have said more extremist things than any UK govt in my lifetime. Braverman, Rees Mogg, Badenoch, Truss are narcissistic wrecking balls. Each has made life in the UK worse.
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Maggie Cheung and me on the great wall of China. We should have started a band.
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I fell in love with Orson Welles films in my teens. I spent 2 yrs in his world making The Eyes of Orson Welles. You'd think that's enough. But tonight I might watch Citizen Kane again. What a font he was - an experimental, radical, pathfinding omnivore.
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Trans women and men are having their identities debated, often attacked, in public by people who arent trans. Don't impose your binary beliefs on something you don't fully understand. #TransRightsAreHumanRights.
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ICA London 8pm tonight. UK premiere of The Story of Film: A New Generation. I'll be there.
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She made 22 great feature films over 5 decades, won loads of awards, battled the system, was a visionary, and her famous tracking shots were as great as Scorsese's, but did the #Oscars think to mention Kira Muratova in their In Memorium section?
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Guy on radio "why would I watch film in cinema when it's also on my TV?".Obviously some people can't get to movies, but for those who can:.Cinema is bigger than life, .your TV is smaller than life. You control it. In entertainment and art I usually want to lose control a bit.
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Have been in Helsinki in summer, but never winter. Neon, mist, noir, gorgeous
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If you're in UK, on Thursday BBCFour is showing Hitchcock's Psycho then a detailed career interview I did with Janet Leigh. We watched Psycho's shower scene together, frame by frame!
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Wonder Woman,Baby Driver, Spiderman,Planet of the Apes, Dunkirk: Can't recall a time when so many of the big films were so good. Stars align.
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For years she's been looking out from the corner of my room. Thank you for everything #GenaRowlands
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In the 80s, cinephilia - mine anyway - looked like this
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I've talked a lot about criticism, so don't want to be a bore, but: ideally film criticism shouldn't only be a response to art. It should BE art - as imaginative, bold, big, funny, alive, alert, furious, aesthetic, memorable, quotable and revealing as the art of film itself.
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One of best films I saw before lockdown was The Lighthouse. Seemed at the time like an extravaganza. Now looks like a doc.
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I found Ken Branagh's new cine-memoir #Belfast generous and inventive. My home town in hopeful noir. A beautiful movie refraction for me. I cried quite a bit.
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David Fincher implies in Premiere that #OrsonWelles's films after Citizen Kane were less good. But Chimes at Midnight is more complete.Ambersons more soulful.Trial more expressionist.Lady from Shanghai more trippy.Macbeth wilder. HI visual thinking didn't decline. It dispersed.
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Red carpet for world premiere of my film new film A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things tonight. Kate Moss eat your heart out
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Brexit isn't the only cause of the new trouble in #NorthernIreland, but it's the main cause. NI voted against Brexit, but Boris Johnson and his Tory team didn't care. Now they sit on their hands as decades of peace work start to come undone. Lofty, lazy, blinkered, reckless.
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The advice "write what you know" has always felt too safe to me. @MichaelaCoel's "write the tale that scares you" is far better I think. It puts risk at the heart of art.
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John Sayles love. If you haven't seen many of his films, Men With Guns, City of Hope, Lone Star are good starting points. All magnificent
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Great that there's a Powell and Pressburger film season on BBC. Heard from Thelma Schoonmaker that the doc I made about I Know Where I'm Going! will be shown too. Don't know when. Made it decades ago, not my usual style, but if you love IKWIG you might like it.
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When I fell in love with cinema as a boy, no way would I imagine that I'd get to work with great actor like Alba Rohrwacher, in one of the great film studios @Cinecitta and speed across Rome on a vespa, and drink negronis. Yet it all happened. Today. I think.
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What a piece of writing: How Covid-19 Signals the End of the American Era – Rolling Stone
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Documentary is often seen as lesser /easier form of filmmaking. But its creative challenges and potential pitfalls are great. It's hard to avoid banality and to think afresh, but when filmmakers do. Wow.
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