The First Movie (12)

This moving documentary is out on DVD Monday. It's a must see.

The First Movie (12) (This review on FilmJuice.com)

For many film lovers the first film they ever saw holds a special place in their heart. Others have been watching films since before they can remember. Critic turned director Mark Cousins’ 2009 documentary attempts to capture the magic of cinema as experienced for the very first time, in Iraq of all places, thus also showing a side of a topical country that news cameras never cover.

Cousins begins by describing his childhood as an imaginative youngster in Belfast, which like present day Iraq of course had bombs of its own. As a child the time he spent in his local cinema felt more ‘real’ to him than that spent in the everyday world outside of it, and he invites us to once again see through the eyes of a child, considering what might be ‘real’ in the experience of a group of children in the small Iraqi town of Goptapa. Like the rest of the country, Goptapa is a place with a history of unimaginably violent tragedy.

To introduce the townsfolk to the movies Cousins shows a selection of classic short films, followed by Steven Spielberg’s magnificent E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. The kids go berserk, clapping and whooping at the finale! In the narration Cousins puts it that “Never have films about love, solidarity and loneliness heard such cheering.” It’s moving stuff.

Next the children are given little high definition cameras to take away with them, with instructions to shoot stories of their own. Without revealing what they come up with, the results demonstrate real creativity and an inner compulsion towards love rather than hate. Cousins refers to cameras as empathy machines, and anyone who witnesses what he has captured with his camera and the children with theirs, will be hard pressed not to be filled with compassion for the young people of Goptapa, who had no say on the situation which they were born into. The way that their environment has shaped their imaginations is affecting and vivid.

The film explores at a base level what the art of filmmaking can be, and the value that it holds for humanity. Cousins’ gentle style of direction and the delicate edit are the perfect fit to bring these points home. His insights delivered via voiceover periodically give way to magical montages, with music that breathtakingly enriches the images. This highlights not only the effectiveness of moving pictures to portray emotions and experiences, but also the way that sound can transform an image into something entirely new, or a place like Iraq into a children's wonderland.

When all is said and done Cousins doesn’t deny the reality of Iraq’s situation, including footage of his crew being ordered to stop filming by the police. As a snapshot of a rarely seen side of the country combined with a powerful reminder of the near elemental force of stories told with moving pictures, The First Movie is a true triumph.