WHAT IS THIS FILM CALLED LOVE

"What is This Film Called Love? is everything The Story of Film is not: it's fun, cheeky and daft, and it's personal, emotional and a bit sad." – The List

Structured as a visual letter to the great film innovator Sergei Eisenstein, What is This Film Called Love? is a meditation on solitude, happiness and filmmaking itself. The follow-up to writer/director Mark Cousins' 15-hour epic The Story of Film: An Odyssey, it offers a far more intimate and autobiographical – and far shorter! – cinematic experience.

Filmed ad-lib in Mexico over three days, for less than £10 (which contributes to the film's immediacy and authenticity), it starts with Cousins musing on his film hero Eisenstein before elaborating on Eisenstein's ideas to look at memory, landscape and the pleasures of walking. Drawing on the work of auteurs such as Chris Marker, and with the music of PJ Harvey and Johnny Cash complementing its whimsical and artfully framed landscapes and intriguing human interactions, it is a truly unique journey, and a must for cinephiles.

"Cousins is playing with the form of cinema – with an elliptical and shambling narrative and a constant stream of images and montages – while trying to understand just what it is that makes us tell stories and, just as importantly, what makes us empathise with them. It's often funny, sometimes moving and, at its best, utterly thought-provoking." – Cineuropa

D/S Mark Cousins P Catherine Aitken, Mark Cousins WS The Festival Agency TD DCP/2012