Mark Cousins

Mark Cousins is a film writer, producer and director. Despite a background in sciences and painting, he was drawn to cinema. Cousins’ first good film was Dear Mr Gorbachev, on which he was associate director. In 1991 he began a five year collaboration with the Edinburgh Film Festival. First as a programmer, then as Director – and together with a great team – he reworked the event, scrapping existing programme categories and inventing Scene by Scene.
Since then Cousins has worked in a range of contexts. He has presented BBC2’s late night cult movie programme, Moviedrome. He co-edited, with Kevin Macdonald, Imagining Reality, a history of documentary film for Faber and Faber. Scene By Scene on TV ran for five years. In 1997 Cousins co-founded the charity Scottish Kids Are Making Movies (SKAMM), to help talented teenagers to think creatively and gain access to film equipment. He is now its Chair. The following year he set up feature film making company 4Way Pictures with Antonia Bird, Robert Carlyle and – subsequently – Irvine Welsh. This is now his main work. (Although he is still exploring new directions – this year he has recorded a drum and bass dance track about the film La Maman Et Le Putain, for London group Wave.) Cousins is currently producing Irvine Welsh’s first original screenplay Meat Trade, and executive producing Welsh’s adaptation of Alan Warner’s novel The Man Who Walks. Mark’s new history of world cinema, The Story of Film, sold 10,000 copies in its first weeks of publication.