Mark Cousins has been described as both a writer's filmmaker and a filmmaker's writer in his latest film I Am Belfast.
"How does this most lyrical of film journalists get away as both poacher and gameskeeper? Cinema shifts all the time and Cousins' porous, cross-form sentences coalesce into the clarity of a window."
Read the full review by Ed Cripps from the TLS below.
Sally Hawkins
Screen Daily reports on Cross My Mind...
EXCLUSIVE: UK sales company Film Constellation launches with drama fromFish Tank producer.
Oscar-nominee Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine) and rising actor Jack Lowden (’71) are set to star in UK drama Cross My Mind, the first film on the slate of fledgling UK sales outfit Film Constellation.
Written by MacArthur Fellowship recipient Naomi Wallace and Bruce McLeod (Flying Blind), the film follows the intense and erotic love affair between a recovering blinded soldier (Lowden) and a married woman (Hawkins) who is taking care of him.
But the clock is ticking, as he is beginning to recover his sight, and the carer is not who the young soldier thinks she is.
Set against Glasgow’s iconic waterfront docks, the feature is produced by Fish Tank producer and Peter Greenaway regular Kees Kasander with Julia Ton under their Cinatura banner alongside John Archer’s Hopscotch Films, who initiated the project together with the late director Antonia Bird, who was on board to direct an earlier version of the film in 2010.
Read more here...
An epic live concert and film experience from Glasgow band Mogwai and renowned film maker Mark Cousins.
Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise is a fiery portrait of our atomic age, a powerful, visceral investigation of life and death in the nuclear age, combining rare archive footage with a brand new soundtrack of original music performed live by Mogwai.
With images of protest marches, Cold War confrontation, Chernobyl and Fukushima, Cousins’ impressionistic film is a kaleidoscope of the appalling destructive power of the atomic bomb, and also the beauty and benefits of x-rays and MRI scans.
Mogwai’s compelling soundtrack encapsulates the nightmare of the nuclear age, but also its dreamlike beauty. They perform their brooding score live on stage alongside the film screening.
These are the first live shows of Atomic in the UK, and the only performances in Scotland this year.
Buy Tickets http://www.eif.co.uk/2016/atomic#.VwTdF2MzNFL
Review from the Irish Post:
"In his reverie Cousins doesn't flinch from nasty reality- the brutal bombing of McGurk's Bar, the IRA carnage of Bloody Friday. But I Am Belfast is both a paean to the past and a prayer for the future- unmissable"
-Steve Martin
Saturday 26th March 2016
She said: “Every bothy is different – some have beds but I’ve slept on a cobbled floor in one. I’ve slept on peat stacks and met different people in them. They’re fantastic – you really appreciate them.
“We’re travelling in the snow sometimes and it’s not easy and you really feel the weather and just by having somewhere warm and dry to go for the night is fantastic.”
Sometimes she’s lost horses while asleep in a bothy as they’ve wandered off and she’s had to find them the next morning.
“Some nights I have to pop my head out every couple of hours to check on the horses,” Iona recalled. “I’ve had them disappear for miles when they’ve wandered home and I’m left in the middle of nowhere with a big saddle.
“I’ve had to walk to find them and ride them back bareback to pick up the saddle again.”
But she loves her life and wouldn’t have it any other way.
Read the full article here
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/star-new-bbc-documentary-bothies-6954903
THE simple mountain bothy might provide shelter to hillwalkers in remote corners of the country. Cat McGoldrick could never have imagined the transformative effect the refuge would have on her life.
Visiting a remote lodge in Glen Etive with Venture Scotland took the 27-year-old out of Glasgow and into an environment so different from her life in the East End of Glasgow, she vowed to change.
Struggling with alcoholism from her mid teens, for years her life for a string of drinking binges followed by blackouts. In and out of hospital to be treated for pancreatitis and liver problems, Cat has lost her older brother and a number of friends to addiction.
In trouble with the police and eventually on a home curfew, the future couldn’t have looked any bleaker. That’s when Cat says she hit rock bottom and knew she had to do something about it.
In BBC Scotland’s Bothy Life, she talks about how a basic cabin in the Highlands gave her time to take stock and build the confidence to tackle her demons.
Read the full article here
http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/14126179.Cat_McGoldrick___Great_outdoors_saved_my_life_/
BBC Two Scotland
9th December 21:00
The Sunday Herald, Dr Jeffrey Meek
Carne Ross was recently published by the Financial Times on his time with the Kurdish people in Rojava.
Click through for the full article.
Accidental Anarchist is due out in 2016.