Project Detail

A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things

Synopsis

A creative biography of the Scottish artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham. One of the most important women in British modern art, the painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was a highly inspirational figure, whose work was deeply impacted by a pivotal event in her life. In May 1949, this leading representative of the modernist St. Ives group of artists climbed to the top of the Grindelwald glacier in Switzerland, an experience which was to transform the way she saw the world. She spent the rest of her life capturing its shapes and colours, indeed its very essence. In his essayistic portrait Cousins delves into complex themes of gender, climate change and creativity, while laying bare the artist’s character and vast imagination so pervasively that he creates the impression we are seeing the world through her eyes.
Official Selection Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2024 - World premiere
Official Selection Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024

Details

Year: 2024
Type of film: Features
Running time: 88 mins
Format: Digital
Director: Mark Cousins
Producer: Mary Bell, Adam Dawtrey
Executive Producer: Mark Thomas
Editor: Timo Langer
Music: Linda Buckley
Principal cast: Narrated by: Tilda Swinton

Genre

Northern Irish Scottish

Production Status

Complete

Production Company

BofA Productions

20 Westerton Drive
Bridge of Allan
FK9 4QL

Sales Company

Reservoir Docs

2 rue Charles Renouvier
75020 Paris
France

Visit Website

Page updates

This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

Suggest amendments

Cinema Has Been My True Love: The Work and Times of Lynda Myles In Mark Cousins’ meditative documentary, Lynda Myles, an influential connoisseur of cinema, reflects on her adventures in the film culture she helped establish. From 1973 to 1980, as the first female director of any festival, Myles transformed the Edinburgh Film Festival into a vibrant, iconoclastic mecca of discovery, championing the work of overlooked auteurs including Hitchcock, Sirk and Sam Fuller. Official selection Telluride Film Festival 2023 - World premiere

The Story of Film: A New Generation

Director: Mark Cousins

Year: 2021

A decade after THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY, an expansive and influential inquiry into the state of moviemaking in the 20th century, filmmaker Mark Cousins returns with an epic and hopeful tale of cinematic innovation from around the globe. In this film Cousins turns his sharp, meticulously honed gaze on world cinema from 2010 to 2021, using a surprising range of works - including JOKER, FROZEN and CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR - as launchpads to explore recurring themes and emerging motifs, from the evolution of film language, to technology’s role in moviemaking today, to shifting identities in 21st-century world cinema. Touching on everything from PARASITE and THE FAREWELL to BLACK PANTHER and LOVER'S ROCK, Cousins seeks out films, filmmakers and communities under-represented in traditional film histories, with a particular emphasis on Asian and Middle Eastern works, as well as boundary-pushing documentaries and films that see gender in new ways. And as the recent pandemic recedes, Cousins ponders what comes next in the streaming age: how have we changed as cinephiles, and how will moviegoing continue to transform in the digital century, to our collective joy and wonder. Official Selection Cannes Film Festival 2021 - Cannes Classics - World premiere Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Create

The Story of Looking