A Story of Children and Film
Director: Mark Cousins
★★★★ (Out of 5)
“FILM is only 12 decades old,” declares critic and director Mark Cousins, “really young for an art-form.”
The Belfast-born Cousins is an authoritative observer of those concerns found on the periphery of cinema and in his new documentary, A Story of Children and Film, he correlates emerging consciousness as seen in kids to the potential of cinema itself, which is, Cousins reckons, “only just getting going.”
A Story of Children and Film is in theatres across Britain and Dublin from early this month. We might currently be suffering from awards fatigue, in the aftermath of the Oscars and BAFTAs, but the demand should be made now that Cousins’ film be nominated for prizes next year.
It’ll take something powerful to better it. A Story of Children and Film is a rich, delicate but forceful fusion of ideas and images, in which Cousins presents his interpretation of how film has represented the varied experiences of childhood and growth.
For several years Cousins was seen as a somewhat offbeat film writer, eccentric in demeanour, erratic in aim but also compelling in expression. Then in 2011 his 15-hour marathon The Story of Film: An Odyssey screened on More4 and was received as a tour de force in film history.
His passion for the complexity of cinema has seen Cousins exploring new horizons beyond customary limits, typified last year when his documentary Here Be Dragons (2013) revealed the texture of film in Albania.
Film critic Mark CousinsIn A Story of Children and Film Cousins focuses on a mix of movies from mainstream, independent and outright obscure sources, in attempting to demonstrate how film can give outer expression to the inner world of childhood.
He uses extracts from features most viewers will recognise – Spielberg’s ET (1982), Laughton’s Night of the Hunter (1946) – and from those most will not – Melody For a Street Organ (2009) by Ukranian Kira Muratova, Ten Minutes Older (1978) by Latvian Herz Frank.
Through viewing random personal footage of his niece and nephew (Laura and Ben) at play, Cousins notes how the presence of the camera alters children’s behaviour – initially wary, then intrigued, interactive and performative by turns.
Cousins then moves from home movies to selected scenes in great films that exemplify the actions of the world upon kids, and their own counter reactions. His choices illustrate children’s moodiness, protectiveness, resourcefulness, fascination and exploration.
Perhaps most pertinently Cousins shows how movies reflect the influence of class and power upon children, effects that leave an imprint forever, as on young Pip in David Lean’s Great Expectations (1946) and the unnamed waif in Chaplin’s The Kid (1921).
His references feature many kids with balloons, those fragile symbols of flight, including J. Lee Thompson’s Yellow Balloon (1953) and Jafar Panahi’s White Balloon (1995). Most powerfully poignant is The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun (1999), by Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambety, about a girl who defies custom to become a street newspaper seller.
Yet Cousins implies that the children we’re viewing are just ourselves in smaller form and that we are them still growing, developing and expanding. Joyce was troubled that he would never know the limits of the Universe, Cousins says, a childhood reason for both anxiety and wonder in contemplating infinite space. “Movies are like kids – kids are like movies,” Cousins opines and cinema is infinite, too.
A Story of Children and Film is one of those you want to watch again the second you’ve reached the end reel. You’ve missed something significant and you want to seek it out.
Watching it a second time you realise you’ll be repeat watching for years, because the depth of insight can’t ever be measured – just like the Universe, or a child’s imagination, or film itself. Cousins has produced a gem.
Mark Cousins’ A Story of Children and Film screens at the Queens Film Theatre Belfast on April 2 and is on general release from April 4
