Despite the number of youngsters in the Duke Of York’s auditorium, A Story Of Children And Film was not a clip show of family favourites, rather a serious take on a previously uninvestigated subject.
Mark Cousins’s documentary showed children have been integral to cinema since the days of Charlie Chaplin and continue to be so into the 21st century.
Cousins used his own one-shot film of his niece and nephew Laura and Ben playing with a marble game as his starting point to explore common themes and characteristics in movies from around the world featuring youngsters as central characters.
His selections ranged from the classics, such as ET, Kes, and The Red Balloon, to more obscure international arthouse offerings destined to frustrate cinephiles for years to come as they struggle to track down Moving, Willow And Wind, The Yellow Balloon and Palle Alone In The World.
Cousins’s gentle tones analysed the clips, digging deep into the cinematography and providing a simple context to the extracts without giving too much away, as well as making tenuous connections to the works of Van Gogh and the topography of the Isle Of Skye.
A great starting point for anyone checking out the Cinema Of Childhood season in this year’s Brighton Festival – just a shame it wasn’t screened at the very start of the strand.
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