The First Movie – taking films to Iraq

Until the film historian Mark Cousins rolled into town to set up an impromptu cinema, the children of Goptapa in northern Iraq had never seen a movie, reports Stephanie West for Channel 4 News.

With a population of just 700, the Kurdish village was one of many places decimated by the chemical bombing of Saddam Hussein’s Anfal in the late 80s.

Everyone knows the country’s history since then – Iraq war and turbulent civil strife – but Cousins wanted to help the children re-imagine their surroundings by showing them childhood films.

Rigging up a cinema in the middle of the village, he showed them a rich selection designed to fire up their imagination. It was Ramadan, so all the adults were indoors.

Spielberg’s classic, ET, caused great excitement because of the flying bicycles.

In a dusty square, as night fell, the children were shown among others, The Red Balloon, about a young boy who escapes bullies when the balloons in Paris unite to help fly him to safety, made in 1950s France.

Palle Alone in the World, set in 1940s Denmark, is about a young boy who wakes to find all the adults are gone, who celebrates by driving a a fire engine, going to the cinema, putting curry powder in his porridge, then flying to the moon.

Spielberg’s classic, ET: The Extraterrestrial, caused great excitement because of the flying bicycles.

After they’d seen them, they were given mini-cameras and asked to go and film whatever they wanted.

The results make up a 90-minute documentary, The First Movie, in which the children surprise Cousins with the breadth of their imagination and the subjects they choose.

Growing up in Belfast in the 1970s, Cousins used to escape into the cinema for a different reality.

Some interview their parents and grandparents about the chemical gassing which caused the deaths of nearly 15 per cent of the village’s population back in May 1988. But others use everything from muddy streams to chickens to imagine stories about love and freedom and flying to the moon.

Growing up in Belfast in the 1970s, with a Catholic mother and Protestant father, Cousins says he experienced the strife on the streets and used to escape into the cinema for a different reality.

In later life, he’s developed a track record for taking and screening movies in unusual settings. While director of the Edinburgh Film Festival, he responded to a plea to bring films to Sarajevo during the siege in the 90s.

And earlier this year he and the actress Tilda Swinton took a mobile cinema on a lorry around the Highlands of Scotland, showing a series of films related to the geography and history of the area.

Cousins likes to screen movies in unusual settings – the film Culloden was screened at the site of the battle.

Adding to the drama of screening films like Culloden at the site of the historic battle, as they arrived to each location they and a crew of volunteers switched off the engine and then hauled the lorry by rope into position for every screening.

But the results of his latest project, The First Movie, are winning acclaim. It’s recently won the Prix Italia Film Award in Turin. Now Cousins is on tour with the film across Britain, where it’s being shown at art house cinemas throughout October.