Mark Cousins tells the story of documentary film

Earlier this season, we looked at Russian documentary film in the Putin years. This week, we’re back on the non-fiction, but the scope is much wider. Among his many achievements, the Irish filmmaker Mark Cousins is perhaps best known for his sprawling documentaries charting the history of cinema: The Story of Film: An Odyssey, originally released in 2011, and Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema, from 2019. Now, Mark is back with a third entry in this pantheon: The Story of Documentary Film. Like its predecessors, it’s an epic undertaking, with 16 hour-long chapters running from the 19th century to the present day and ranging all across the globe, examining the political, social, and aesthetic factors that have shaped documentary, with examples ranging from the canonical to the deliciously obscure. Chapters of the film have begun screening at festivals, including in Berlin and Cannes.

This week, host Sam Goff sits down with Mark for a fittingly wide-ranging conversation about how he approaches these long-form odysseys, his personal experiences in Eastern Europe, from visiting Moscow during perestroika to watching films in bomb shelters in Sarajevo, and some of his favourite filmmakers from the region – including Latvian legends Herz Frank and Juris Podnieks, Czech trailblazer Helena Třeštíková, and Bulgaria’s Nevena Tosheva.

Explore Klassiki’s collection of documentary titles here.

Get in touch: podcast@klassiki.online.

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Intro music by Juliet Merchant.