Documentary Competition review - I AM BELFAST by Mark Cousins

Mark Cousins returns and rediscovers his hometown in his latest work I Am Belfast, which had its international premiere in the documentary competition of the 50th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

In the last few years, the celebrated and prolific filmmaker Mark Cousins has established a distinctive style in the documentary filmmaking form, particularly through his personal explorations of such places as Mexico, Albania and Sardinia. For his latest work I Am Belfast, he returns to the place where he was born and grew up. He tells its story mostly by way of a long conversation with the city of Belfast itself, personified by a "10,000 year old woman". The structure of the film is hence dictated by the natural flow of a conversation, which rather than following a stale chronological order, follows a more intuitive and cinematic understanding of tone and mood. 

This is an approach that is true to its impressionistic style, and is inspired by the filmmaker's own feelings and memories of the place, not only through its fascinating exploration of its history from the mythical timelessness of its salt hills to the concrete and bricks of more recent times - by way of course of the still visible scars and walls, symbols of the violent and turbulent Troubles. It is also through a sense enhancing discovery of its architecture, colour palette and musicality. 

In fact, it is a re-discovery in many ways, as Cousins perhaps for the first time in cinema pays tribute to Belfast's vibrant colours and outragrousness, through its graffitis and through random objects that seem to be almost appropriately placed to break up any street corner's monotony should someone decide to take a photo right there. This sharply contrasts with the greys in which it is usually represented.

There's further poetry to be found in the collaboration between the filmmaker and fellow Belfast-born man, the great cinematographer Christopher Doyle, the eyes behind the iconic and visually rich look of Wong Kar Wai's acclaimed works. I Am Belfast was in fact partially shot by Doyle, and he leaves a distinctive imprint to the film that gives it a dreamlike quality, and an added warmth that sometimes acts like a gelling element and directly blends the face of actress Helena Bereen, the human personification of Belfast, with the characteristic landscape of the city itself. 

Despite its essential solemn and meditative nature, much like his previous works, Mark Cousins is also very colloquial and the afore mentioned intuitive style also allows for a certain sense of humour to help make the film very enjoyable and all the more enriching. He even plays with the medium through a Makhmalbaf-like scene in which he imagines the funeral of the "last bigot in Belfast", a final imagined resolution to the fierceness of intolerance that has impacted its population for far too long. This also allows us a glimpse into what might happen if Mark Cousins were to make a leap to fiction film.