Venue: Gala
Date: Sunday 21st March
Time: 3pm
Director Mark Cousins / UK / Iraq 2009/ 76 min
Certificate 15 / In English
We are delighted to welcome director Mark Cousins who will be introducing the film and then will host a short Q&A session.
Northern Irish cineaste Mark Cousins is a passionate advocate of the power of film to transform our understanding of the world. In The First Movie he visits a small village in the Kurdish North of Iraq armed with a projector, a selection of great movies and three small cameras to allow the children there to express their inner imaginations.
Tickets £10 / £8, call 0191 332 4041 or Buy Online
Anonymous 
Ok, before I start with any negative comments, I’d like to make it clear that I really liked this film. It’s nicely told, beautiful in its own way, and heart-warming, with all sorts of positive themes such as hope, innocence, laughter. The First Movie sees director, Mark Cousins, go to the Kurdish village of Goptapa in northern Iraq, primarily spending time with the children of this small, idyllic hilltop village. Two statements are made at the very start of the film that give away the film-maker’s intentions: he is aware of the impact that film and the media have on our perceptions of the world (to ‘describe’ the world, as he calls it), and is therefore careful not to mention the name Iraq at the start so as to avoid conjuring up in us any preconceptions or connotations, even though we all know where he is. Secondly, he recalls his own childhood in Belfast and the significance the local cinema held for him. The cinema, a place of refuge, a sanctuary where one might rest and think – a place more “real” than the war, as he puts it. These two statemtnts tie together, as he goes to Goptapa in the hope of encouraging its children – who he appears to view as a source of innocent and unformed light – to become enthusiastic about the magical and liberating power of film and to, who knows, take up film and ‘redescribe’ the world. The village of Goptapa, for example, is one of many Kurdish villages that saw chemical weapons used against it by Saddam Hussein, and although the kids did not experience this directly, the world is already described to them in a certain fashion by the adults and elders of the village.
The idea of redescribing the world is a very interesting, hopeful and uplifting one, but one which was unfortunately not made enough of during the film itself. Throughout the film I was getting a great sense of warmth and sweetness from the images on the screen and some of the children’s thoughts, but kept being bugged by the thought that I wasn’t really sure what the film’s point was. It was only at the post-screening Q&A with the director that some of these loose ends were tied. Questions might also be raised about the daring and scope of the film. For all Iraq’s woes, these children seemed to be living a life altogether detached from the Iraq we hear about on the news, and it might be much more interesting to ask what form this redescription of the world would take with an inner-city Iraqi child. One gets the impressions that just as Cousins sees these children as sources of purity, he chooses this remote village for the same reasons. As such, he appears to have his own agenda which he imposes on the film’s subjects. This might be an unfair accusation if taken on its own – which it shouldn’t be – because the films does hold substantial merits and raises interesting questions. All in all, a highly recommended viewing and very enjoyable for a multitude of reasons.
The Northern Lights Film Festival managed to host yet another good event, showing the latest creation of grassroots filmmaker Mark Cousins. The organisers mixed a warm welcome, a comfortable venue, a tender movie and an inspiring post-show discussion with Mark to blend that sort of event you would suggest everyone to attend.
“The first movie” is the tale of a boy grown up in wartime Belfast, a boy who uses imagination as an escape and the cinema as a protective environment. The boy becomes a man and establishes himself as a successful movie-maker. In his 40s, the man set up a project which will lead him in Goptapa, a small village located in post-war Kurdish North-Iraq, bringing high-definition cameras to hand out to local kids. He wishes to give them the opportunity to unleash their imagination and help them to create their first movies. After breaking the ice with some joyful playing, tales of desperation and hope start flowing in his hands. The man is amused by the simple truths disclosed in the kids’ movies and relates their bounds with the village life with his own experience as a boy in Northern Ireland, closing the evergreen circular storytelling.
That boy is Mark Cousins, who constantly feeds in the movie the feelings and emotions he had while recording it. He spells out his opinions throughout, sometimes preventing the audience from freely intaking the magic behind the beautiful shoots of Goptapa landscape. Because of the style and the thematic, ‘The first movie’ would work better as a documentary tout court, for which it lacks some background information about the project, which would be fruitful for the audience to understand the challenges involved into setting up such an inspiring project. Nevertheless, the movie has the power of showing a basic truth; the aspirations of all kids around the world are the same. We all want to live in a friendly environment, we aspire to improve our life standard, and we seek support of family and friends. No geographical borders can be made around human souls and the dynamics that shape an individual personality work similarly on everyone. Therefore, it is easy to connect with the kids in Goptapa, and it would have been the same if they were from Belfast, New York, Perth or Johannesburg. We can identify with those kids, because we are those kids. Sometime we forget.