A Story of Children and Film

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Simon T @Bucksplit 03/07/2017 Very much a companion piece to Mark Cousins' monumental A Story of Film, this too has the mood of a dream, a visual meditation on the particular art of portraying childhood in cinema. As before, his selections tend to come from the less well-known ends of world cinema, although he has time to include Spielberg, Loach, Campion and others. Very personal, quite idiosyncratic. See more 12/31/2014 A Christmas present to myself. Wonderful. See more 12/03/2014 Manages to sustain an interest through some decent observation about children in the history of cinema, but there's no real purpose to this documentary. See more 10/10/2014 A touch too artistic but there's no denying the knowledge and eye Mark Cousins has for world cinema, this time from knee-level! See more 08/31/2014 I am sure this documentary is brilliant for anyone studying children in cinema. But I am not, so whilst I found most of it vaguely interesting, it didn't hold my attention. See more 04/10/2014 Not sure this is a story. More like an observation and a musing- a visual essay. It starts with Cousins' informal home-movie observing his nephew and niece being children, and moves on to a series of clips from 53 films, from 25 countries. Now that's eclectic. Many are films I have not come across, and stretch right back in time to the silent movies. Cousins takes us on a slightly ramshackle tour, highlighting the various angles on childhood that these movie-clips illustrate ;- the strop ;the shyness ; the child-as-parent ; the adventuresomeness ; the resilience; and so on. It's gently done stuff, as befits Cousins' soft Northern Irish accent. The central point seems to be that childhood has a common thread throughout the worlds of geography and time. The film provokes the viewer to examine his/her own childhood and also the way that society sees childhood, and even how should we view childhood. A timely and provoking piece that is very enjoyable in its understated way. It made me reflect how I am shy to watch children closely if they are not family. And how sad that this is a reflection of the change in our society during my lifetime, when they are. as this film shows so well, such an interesting bunch of human beings. I'm not sure I got the connection with Cousins' visit to and (beautiful) clips of, Skye. Perhaps it's this whole business of really seeing, of looking "on". See more Read all reviews

A Story of Children and Film

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