The Story of Documentary Film – The 2010s & 2020s Showcase © Fire of Love, 2022, dir. Sara Dosa, Canada, USA, Sandbox Films, Cot
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About
Canadian Premiere
Film is endlessly shapeshifting as it moves from one technological ecosystem to the next. In The Story of Documentary Film – The 2010s & 2020s, Mark Cousins brings his 16-hour epic into the now, where nonfiction has splintered across phone cameras, GoPros, YouTube, TikTok, live-streams, and feeds. These chapters move through dozens of documentaries including Jackass, Citizenfour, I Am Not Your Negro, and The Square, as filmmakers trace the roots of bodily autonomy, surveillance, racism, revolt, and border violence. The present is not a clean break from documentary history; it is history returning through new tools.
Across nearly three hours, Cousins questions what truly defines a “documentary” after cinéma vérité has detached from its old frame. Is a TikTok mukbang or “what I eat in a day” video so far from Marguerite Lumière drinking coffee in one of her husband’s films? Cousins reaches for connections across images and eras, searching for bits of the truth like the filmmakers he profiles.
Content Considerations: blood, brief flashing/strobing lights, protest footage, refugee crisis
Film is endlessly shapeshifting as it moves from one technological ecosystem to the next. In The Story of Documentary Film – The 2010s & 2020s, Mark Cousins brings his 16-hour epic into the now, where nonfiction has splintered across phone cameras, GoPros, YouTube, TikTok, live-streams, and feeds. These chapters move through dozens of documentaries including Jackass, Citizenfour, I Am Not Your Negro, and The Square, as filmmakers trace the roots of bodily autonomy, surveillance, racism, revolt, and border violence. The present is not a clean break from documentary history; it is history returning through new tools.
Across nearly three hours, Cousins questions what truly defines a “documentary” after cinéma vérité has detached from its old frame. Is a TikTok mukbang or “what I eat in a day” video so far from Marguerite Lumière drinking coffee in one of her husband’s films? Cousins reaches for connections across images and eras, searching for bits of the truth like the filmmakers he profiles.
Content Considerations: blood, brief flashing/strobing lights, protest footage, refugee crisis
