01/04/2014 - Cineuropa met Irish director Mark Cousins in order to speak about his documentary A Story of Children and Film, coming out in British theatres and in Italy on DVD, curated by the Bologna cineteca

When he arrives, Mark Cousins shows us a black and white photo of a child. “He was brought up in Belfast in the 1970s. He couldn’t read but he loved to draw,” he says. “The first time he went into a cinema, he felt safe. Cinema welcomed him in its arms and became a friend who never abandoned him.” This portrait of himself as a child is how the director introduces his film A Story of Children and Film [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a kaleidoscope portrait of childhood using the images of 53 great films from 25 different countries, from the 1920s to today, from Hollywood to the world’s south.

The film will come out in the United Kingdom on April 4 (look here for the programming), with a screening at the 14^th Belfast Film Festival on April 2. In Italy, the documentary will be coming out on DVD with the Cineteca of Bologna, together with a book and an introductory note by Mark Cousins and an essay by Goffredo Fofi. This unique and privileged perspective on the world of children is a follow up of sorts on The Story of Film: An Odyssey, a personal story of cinema also told by Mark Cousins through the editing of cinema sequences. A Story of Children and Film is a lively and poetic view of childhood through a mosaic of sequences, which include cinema from all sorts of different times and nations: from Chaplin to E.T. by Spielberg, Shirley Temple to Jean-Pierre Léaud, from the Japan of Yasujiro Ozu to the Iran of Jafar Panhai, not forgetting Bergman, Buñuel, Ken Loach, Tarkovskij.

“I wanted to represent the various states of children,” Cousins says, and he shows us a gigantic piece of paper. “This is the screenplay. Impossible to put this on a computer.” Anger, shyness, fear… There is a shot from a film for every one of these feelings. “I gathered the most unexpected aspects of these. This means this is not a film the spectator would expect, like Bicycle Thieves, I wanted to stimulate curiosity.” In fact, many films are little known in the western world. “For me, it was important to establish a tie between a Japanese girl and an Iranian one.”

Adults are absent or out of the picture in this celebration of childhood. “I chose scenes with children with children where adults are out of the picture. I wanted to accentuate feelings of empathy with other children, with animals and balloons.” And what is the common link between films from all these different countries? “Children live the present very strongly. Iranian and African cinema have always been able to capture and represent the present.” 

(Translated from Italian)