The Story of Looking
As he prepares for surgery to restore his vision, Mark Cousins explores the role that visual experience plays in our lives. In a deeply personal meditation on the power of looking, he guides us through the riches of the visible world — a kaleidoscope of extraordinary imagery across cultures and eras — to reveal how looking shapes human experience, empathy, discovery and thought. When the Covid-19 pandemic brings another dramatic shift in perspective, he reaches out to others for their lockdown visions, and travels into the future to consider how his sight will continue to change.
Mark Cousins (1965) is a director, writer and film critic. He is known for his film The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011), a 15-hour long documentary which was broadcast on television and also screened at the Toronto Film Festival; and Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema (2018), a 14-hour long documentary about film history, focusing on the films made by women. He was a programmer at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 1996-97, hosted the Moviedrom and Scene by Scene TV shows at BBC2. In 2009, he and Tilda Swinton created a traveling film festival in Scotland.