Mark Cousins takes you on a walk through the streets of Belfast for a unique vision of its dream life.
Known for projects like the mini-series The Story of Film: An Odyssey and his recent documentary 6 Desires: DH Lawrence and Sardinia, Mark Cousins has perhaps always had a tendency for looking over his shoulder with a fondly retrospective gaze. But with his latest film, it feels as though the poet-director has crossed into much more personal territory. I Am Belfast ambivalently takes him back to the city that shaped him and the city he left some twenty years ago.
The speaker suggested in the film’s title isn’t necessarily Cousins, though, because as in 6 Desires, the director once again chooses to efface his white, male voice. Instead, he opens up the floor to a female speaker, Helena Bereen, who plays a mystical embodiment of the capital itself. What follows when the two figures meet is almost a cross between a playful interview and a mother-son walk, as the two begin navigating the urban streets that surround Northern Ireland’s deeply historic port.
Their journey straddles an interesting line, as the documentary moves fluidly between archival clips of pre-1916 Belfast and rough, modern day shots that almost seem like fragments of found footage. And Cousins’ very artistic appropriation of the black-and-white footage he uses also no doubt explains why the BFI were keen to distribute this film as they approach the end of their ‘Film Forever’ mission statement. However, I Am Belfast also feels important because it smartly demonstrates a different way of interacting with film.
The documentary is full to the brim with a beautifully-scripted sort of spoken-word voiceover that interacts directly with what we see on the screen. Repeatedly this adoring narration dwells on things like glorious, incidental colour schemes that occur in Belfast today, for example. And sometimes Cousins will comment that only this or that were missing from the pretty images, before a passer-by invariably walks that object or colour into the frame, and the narrator wryly asks, “am I creating all this?”
This sort of interactive conceit also extends to the way the director pauses, rewinds and replays footage, repeatedly allowing him to draw out fresh observations from the minutiae of modern life. But it can even be found in the often dreamy soundtrack of ’71 composer David Holmes, who apparently scored the film whilst they were shooting. And this on-site atmosphere really allows the film to discover a number of incidental moments of light-hearted humour which make it a joy.
But I Am Belfast is also the tale of a city that does have recent tragedies at its heart, and this is something that Cousins doesn’t sugarcoat. It is simply something he delays within the film’s patchwork structure, so that we do get a clear sense that there is more to Belfast than just the scars and barriers left behind by the “The Troubles.” This proves to be a real triumph, too, because rather than just becoming mired in politics, Cousins’ film becomes almost dreamlike.
It is as if I Am Belfast crosses into a realm as timeless as the city, and it’s as though you’re falling to earth and seeing its poetry properly for the first time. Just as the film notes about one of the city’s ancient rivers, Cousins’ documentary marks a point where sweet, fresh waters meet salty, bitter waves – and together they form something complex and beautifully representative of Belfast.
I Am Belfast is out in select UK cinemas on April 8th.
