The First Movie

Film: The First Movie (2009)

For over 100 years now, the cinematic medium has been used to spread a multitude of ideas, from the artistic through to the political. This is so ingrained in our culture that it can be difficult to imagine our lives without film, let alone how we might have felt when we first experienced its power.

In this haunting documentary, film-maker Mark Cousins visits a small Kurdish-Iraqi village and shows films to local children their first time. They are then given cameras to make their own films, and the resulting creations tell insightful stories of the magic, horror, and mundanity, of...