Interview: Mark Cousins On 'The Story Of Documentary Film'
Ahead of its Sundance premiere, we discuss the importance and challenges of sharing the history of documentary with the world, now more than ever.
My Sundance began this year with The Story of Documentary Film, and it ruined almost everything I’ve watched since. The latest series from Mark Cousins (The Story of Film: An Odyssey) takes viewers on a thoughtful journey through 140 years of nonfiction cinema, and while I only received access to the first episode of the 16-hour film, that was enough to remind me of the significance and artistry that documentary is capable of. Nothing else I was seeing in my first batch of Sundance documentary screeners seemed to matter in comparison or excite me on the same level.
Talking to Cousins last week helped put today’s documentaries into perspective, but our conversation made me more excited to watch the rest of The Story of Documentary Film and all the documentaries of the past that it might introduce me to. I’m sure the series will point out all my blind spots regarding the history of the mode. During the interview alone, Cousins shared the names of some filmmakers I need to (and will) learn about. We also discussed the continued importance of documentaries, especially given the state of the world at the moment, and what it means for the future.
Below is our conversation in full, with minor editing for clarity.
First of all, thank you for making this series. I’m so excited about it, and not just because of how vitally informative it is. It’s really creatively done. It’s artistic. Opening with the elephant triptych: amazing.
I was so pleased with that, because you know, you need to grab people, don’t you? I saw that little thing on social media about the elephant, and I thought, “Fuck, the Lumieres could have done this.” Documentary is quite simple in a way. We don’t need to be an intellectual to understand what documentary is. We just need to look out into the world and see something happening and capture its intensity. I don’t know who shot that little thing, but isn’t it lovely? The elephant comes, and she puts her head against the digger.
Documentary filmmaking is a way of saying, “Life is fantastic; let’s try to understand it and how fantastic it is.”
The first episode ruined me for all other documentaries at Sundance this year. It’s not just that documentaries 100 years ago and older had so much more purpose and significance, but you make them all seem more important than almost anything today. I can’t wait for filmmakers to watch it because I don’t think enough of them are familiar with the history and potential of documentary.
That’s what I do. That’s my job, isn’t it? My job is to say, “I’m a filmmaker. I love this art form. I love this language. Let’s dive into it. Let’s plunge into it, in a way.” I think The Story of Documentary Film was a kind of plunge. It’s very optimistic, I think. You’ve only just seen the first chapter, but already, there, we can see the origins of documentary, what makes it special. The fact that Georges Demenÿ says, “Je vous aime,” isn’t that beautiful? “I love you.” I think that if you really want to boil it down, documentary filmmaking is a way of saying, “Life is fantastic; let’s try to understand it and how fantastic it is.”
How familiar and educated were you with the whole history of documentary going into this project?
Quite, to be honest. With Kevin Macdonald, you know, the great filmmaker, he and I did a book called Imagining Reality in 1995 [ed: first published in 1996], and we were boys. Already back then, that’s more than 30 years ago, we tried to say, “Look, we have to talk about the creativity of this form.” Obviously, documentary is sociological and journalistic in some ways, but back then, [with] that book that we did, we tried to say it matters, the creativity of that. So I was pretty informed. Everywhere I went in the world in the last 30 years, I always got my antennae looking for the great filmmakers. I’m certainly not starting from scratch, shall we say. But still, there’s always more to know. You have to challenge yourself and your own opinions. With this particular film, The Story of Documentary Film, I challenge my opinions a bit more.
It’s humbling to see how people across this planet that we love have used this art form as a call for compassion.
Was there anything that you were surprised to learn while making The Story of Documentary Film?
Too much. So much. If you go to the 1930s, and if we think of Germany in the 1930s and female filmmakers, one person comes to mind. I don’t even need to name her. You know who I’m talking about. Leni Riefenstahl. But at the same time, in the 1930s, there was another great female German director called Ella Bergmann-Michel. My job, I think, as a passionate cinephile and filmmaker, is to say, yeah, of course, we cannot dismiss Leni Riefenstahl, even though I think her art is monstrous. We ask who else was doing great stuff, and we’ve got Ella Bergmann-Michel.
There are loads of surprises throughout the whole thing. It’s a long piece, you know, it’s 16 hours. So it’s a long piece of work. But when you get to Africa in the ‘60s, my god. It becomes so interesting. There’s a great Egyptian filmmaker called Atteyat al-Abnoudy. She’s doing remarkable work. Brilliant. It’s humbling, to be honest, to see how people across this planet that we love have used this art form as a call for compassion in a way. A kind of way to say, “Look what’s happening.” Obviously, in the U.S., at the moment, where you are, you know bad things are happening, to be honest, but documentary has done good work. The filmmakers have done really good work to try to help us understand each other.
Similar to many filmmakers, most film students and film critics have a huge blind spot when it comes to documentaries. Do you hope to change that?
Yep. I’ve noticed in the U.S., in particular, people talk about “features,” and when they use the word “feature,” they mean fiction. But “feature” is a 90-minute form. So even at the most basic aspect of the language, there’s a lot to learn. But we’ve always got a lot to learn. Each one of us. I think the geopolitics makes it more urgent. There’s an urgency about this, I feel, in some way.
I’m not a wrecker. I’m not a destroyer. I’m not trying to say that everything we know about documentary is wrong. I personally think Shoah is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen. I think Michael Moore’s work is great. I’m not trying to take the canon down. I’m trying to add to it. I’m trying to say, look, if we love this form, which we do, then we have to also love the great Arabic filmmakers and the Iranian filmmakers. And when we get to the 1970s, I basically plunge into Indian documentary, and it’s absolutely fucking brilliant. Really. Indian documentary in the 1970s is so great. It’s sort of about sharing the love in a way.
Obviously, there are a lot of terrible things happening in the world, but this particular project, I think, is on a more optimistic plane than that. We’re trying to say, look what great things the community, by which I mean the documentary community, look what great things they’ve done in adversity, contra mundo, against the world.
We cannot require our documentary filmmakers only to try to change the world. It’s more important to describe the world.
In the press notes for The Story of Documentary Film, it says, “Most nonfiction films are formulaic or boring. You will not see those here.” But why not? If that constitutes most of documentary, isn’t that part of its story?
I’ve done this so many times. This is my third history of cinema. Of course, all that other stuff matters, but I’ve only got one life. I’m a 60-year-old man. I’m only going to focus on the people who did really innovative stuff, great stuff. I’ve always been interested in innovation. I’m not an academic or anything like that. Somebody else can tell us what the rubbish films did. I’m just interested in the great films, the innovators, and I would like to think that I’m slightly in that field myself.
I’ve seen you say, and you even have a t-shirt with this line, “Documentary kills fascism.” Do you think documentaries still have the power to change the world?
Documentary just needs to say, “Here’s what it’s like to be alive.” If you jump into Japan in the ‘70s, the documentaries in Japan in the ‘70s are so brilliant. They are campaigning documentaries, and they are very sociological and political. But we cannot require our documentary filmmakers only to try to change the world. It’s more important to describe the world. But I think documentary is our best chance if we want to. In your country at the moment, there’s a kind of real reaction against knowledge and expertise and things like this, and people who know stuff, and so documentary has to fight against that, I think. If we go down the route of not being interested in knowledge, as we say in Ireland, “it’s a road to no town.” There’s no town where knowledge doesn’t matter.
I think The Story of Documentary Film can contribute to the knowledge economy and say, “Actually, there’s stuff that matters.”
I don’t know if you get into this in the end, but do you think documentary is under threat now from AI or from any other issues we’re facing regarding trust in images?
I go there. An interesting thing is that one of our images that we’re using to publicize this film is what’s called Butterfly Dance. It’s from 1895 or 1896, the woman dancing. Just to test what AI is like, I fed that into AI and said, “What is this?” The first thing it said was, “This is an image from Powell and Pressburger’s film The Red Shoes,” which was in the 1940s, like 50 years later. And I said, “No, it’s not.” The second thing it told me, it said, “This is an image from Daisies, by Vera Chytilová.” Both fucking stupidly wrong. We absolutely need, frankly, people like me who know this stuff and say no, I’m sorry.
I think that’s why this film matters in a way. In music, there’s this word “glissando” where a note goes [Cousins makes a sliding downward sound]. I feel that’s what’s happening in terms of the knowledge economy. So I think The Story of Documentary Film can contribute to the knowledge economy and say, “Actually, there’s stuff that matters.” In terms of facts and points of view, etc.
Did you hit any snags in your research or your gathering of clips where something wasn’t easily available?
Yes. I’ve dealt with this in the previous films that I’ve made. What you don’t want to do is say, “This is not available, therefore we won’t show it.” Something that’s not available, it’s extra important to show it. Because the reasons it’s not available are either nobody was interested, or it was censored, or something like that. In this one, my producer John Archer, I say to him, “I need this thing. I need this clip. And we need to find it somehow, some way.”
What I’m really lucky about is that because I’ve done a number of film history projects, and I think I’m respected for those projects, it means that when we approach an archive somewhere in the world, they’re likely to be helpful. They know they want to be part of something like this. The Story of Documentary Film will be a shop window for a kind of documentary that we want to know. So I think people collaborate with us and work with us because they think our work will be more widely seen.
Documentary is huge, and so I want to try to walk people through this and not be overwhelmed by it.
Were there any other major challenges on this one?
The challenge is always the same. It’s a creative question. How do you do something good and innovative? You’ve just seen the first hour, and even that first hour, how do I try to interest people? How do I say, look, you know some of this stuff, and that’s great, but let me take you to a place that you don’t know, and hopefully that’s an enjoyable place as well. So it’s always the same question, a creative question.
Do you find it difficult to narrativize it all?
I don’t find it difficult to narrativize it. I get so excited by what I see and the films that I’m seeing, and I think other people might be excited. My question is just, “How do I put it in a story structure so that people are not overwhelmed?” Documentary is huge, and so I want to try to walk people through this and not be overwhelmed by it. After Sundance, we’ve got four hours in Berlinale, and I think we’re going to roll this project out across the whole of this year. We’re trying to say “follow us,” because it’s a good story to tell.