Mark Cousins is on a film odyssey and search for Scottish identity

A turbulent decade later, the sequel has arrived in the form of A New Generation, which encapsulates the last 10 years of film through its thematic shifts and an evolving relationship to new technology and its cinematic function.

Cousins takes a wholly optimistic approach in his new work, focusing on aspects that push the medium to new places. He attributes social change as one of the factors that drive this.

“I took the same thread as previously, not looking at all cinema but the innovators in cinema who were changing things, who were pushing boundaries, and there were a lot of changers and boundary-pushers in the last 10 years of film because of social change. We’ve had a series of liberation movements, and they need to go further and faster, but they have had an impact on cinema that gets made. So I wanted to look at, for example, why Black Panther, even though it’s a very mainstream movie in its form, in its content, felt as if it was pushing boundaries.”

Scotland itself has experienced a decade of change. Many eyes and minds were opened in 2014 as the country decided on the future of a union that’s established itself for over 300 years. Since then, ­independence has become a constant fixture in ­Scottish political and social life. Cousins, an avowed internationalist, was initially wary, seeing the effects of nationalist movements across the world community.

“The word nationalism was a dirty word for me for a long time like many people on the left. I think what has happened is that the SNP government has cleansed that word for me.

“I was in Bosnia. I took the Edinburgh Film ­Festival to Sarajevo during the siege so I saw that kind of ­nationalism which was the majority ­nationalism. I was brought up in ­Northern Ireland so we knew something about that. I’ve filmed in Iraq so I’ve seen a lot of ­negative ­versions of nationalism but the current nationalism that I’m seeing in the Scottish ­Government is very encouraging.”

COUSINS’S work explores the cinematic output of countries that have experienced grand change and how the new cinema reflects this point of view. It could be argued that shifting attitudes and ideas in Scotland’s political and social fabric haven’t been properly reflected in the cinema it produces, which comes down to long-term problems with access to opportunity and the relevant expansion of Scotland’s domestic creative capacity.

“Scotland has been brilliant at ­literature, brilliant at music, but ­Scotland hasn’t overachieved in film history. ­Luckily, we have people like Bill Douglas and Lynne Ramsay and Bill Forsyth and Margaret Tait and so on. We have ­sentinel figures but we could have more. We could have had more in the 1950s, 60s and 70s and we didn’t. We have to keep pushing in that area.”

Cousins laments the lost generations of filmmakers, frustrated at the hordes of unrealised potential. With a more fostering environment for artists, his chronicling of film history could have looked a tad different with Scotland’s contributions.

So how does Scotland ensure that the talented people who are living here get to have their ideas and creativity come out on-screen? A bigger focus on film education would help relieve an ­anxiety that Scottish people, and particularly those from the working class, couldn’t or shouldn’t be in a position of creative authority, if they are encouraged to at all.

“In Northern Ireland, loads of young people study A-levels or highers in film. Not nearly as many people do it here. One of the things we need to improve massively is film education and more general visual-culture education in our schools.”

“A lot of people growing up not only in the posh bits of Scotland but the ­working class bits of Scotland, in Orkney, the ­Borders and all over the place will be ­innately good visual thinkers. If they are not exposed to cinema and shown that cinema is as important as poetry or ­music then maybe they’ll go off in a different ­direction and we won’t get to see their great movies.”

There is a somewhat unspoken ­expectation that films from working class Scots should represent the environment they were born into, that their platform should naturally be used to spotlight ­naked reality. While these stories are ­important in highlighting the lives of many people in Scotland and beyond, the wider imagination of artists must also be respected and allowed to develop.

“Once we get more working class ­people into the film industry that doesn’t mean they’re all going to make Ken Loach films and realist films. They then must be free to make any film they want. If they want to make musicals, for example. Just because someone comes from a working class background, it doesn’t mean they’re going to make films about society and ­social change. We must allow them the complete freedom to make what they want.”

COUSINS illustrates how film transcends the concept of borders. “The anxiety that a young working class person of an Asian background feels growing up in a very white place, that anxiety will be shared with a young working class person in the outskirts of Paris or Rome or other places where you’re a minority” he says.

An example he gives is the 2020 film Limbo, a story about four asylum seekers living on a Scottish island as they await the fate of their asylum claims. Filmed in the Outer Hebrides, Limbo reflects the bewildering set of circumstances ­asylum seekers must go through to live in safety, tapping into the universal ­feelings of ­alienation and powerlessness as an ­outsider.

Part of cinematic magic is its ability to capture the essence of a time and place, a task Limbo excels at. Films tend to live on longer than anyone in front or behind the camera, giving it a place of ­importance in our cultural history. Each film makes its own mark on the world, ­transporting viewers to the spirit and soul of the ­moment.

“When you make a film it’s like ­putting a message in a bottle then you seal the bottle and 50 years later people can open the bottle and smell it and get a sense of the time. When we watch a film like ­Gregory’s Girl now it brilliantly captures a moment. You open the bottle and you get the feeling of Cumbernauld from when that was. In 50 years time when people want to feel what it was like to live in Scotland in 2021, the films will ­communicate that.”

Despite the lack of filmmakers in the driving seat, Cousins is adamant that artists will create regardless of the ­conditions. While independence would offer a chance to rebuild and rethink the country’s relationship to its film culture, it is not a prerequisite for the voices of artists in Scotland to be heard.

“Some of the best film cultures are dominated by other political regimes. If you look at Iran, the Iranian government is oppressive and yet Iranian cinema is some of the best in the world” he says. Sometimes the limitations give birth to innovation.

The constant innovation of technology is also a focus of Cousins’s look at the past decade. The production of high-definition cameras in a standard iPhone and the proliferation of professional editing software means anyone can become an amateur filmmaker.

The internet is full of wide-reaching platforms where all sorts of videos are found, further blurring the traditional definition of what a film even is. In a world of YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat and others, we all become our own personal documentarians as snippets of our lives are broadcasted to whoever will watch. People have never been filmed as much as they have at any point in history.

THIS phenomenon has bled back into the traditional film world, shaping not only its content and style but also in how films are produced and distributed.

During lockdown, the internet became the only game in town for many artists, and virtual screenings, festivals and exhibitions became a way for filmmakers to still connect with a world that’s forced them inside. Faced with the cold ­shoulder from the mainstream industry, many choose to bypass the middlemen ­completely and take advantage of the modern world. Cousins himself realises how this shift benefited his work, fittingly resulting in a process much different from the one he experienced 10 years ago.

“Now you don’t need the green light, you can go on red. This new film, A New Generation, has no TV money in it, no Creative Scotland money in it, no arts council money in it. That is new, you wouldn’t do that a while ago.”

Mark Cousins’s The Story of Film: A New Generation is in cinemas and on demand from 17 December. Tickets & Info: https://www.the-story-of-film.com