Even in Cannes, Mark Cousins stands out as a movie diehard

It’s not hard to find people at the Cannes Film Festival dedicated to the big-screen, theatrical life of movies

CANNES, France -- It's not hard to find people at the Cannes Film Festival dedicated to the big-screen, theatrical life of movies. But even among the devoted flocks of Cannes, Mark Cousins stands out as a true believer. The Belfast-born, Edinburgh-based filmmaker and critic has a boundless affection for movies, and tastes that stretch around the globe. He has made pilgrimages in the footsteps of beloved films (like Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's “I Know Where I'm Going!" which he turned into a documentary ) and composed mammoth, hourslong documentaries on the art form's history propelled as much as anything by his own romantic, inquisitive sense of wonder. So great is his ardor that he literally drapes himself in movies. Directors' names typically adorn his clothing. He has tattoos of Orson Welles and the Japanese actor-filmmaker Tanaka Kinuyo. The tie he brings to Cannes has “EP” scrawled on the inside, for Pressburger. With him wherever he goes, as a reminder to preserve a childlike perspective, is a laminated still from Herz Frank's “10 Minutes Older” of a boy with mouth open in awe. “I was brought up Catholic and we were of course all into devotional objects. So why not?” Cousins says of his bodily props. “Life’s tough in a way. It’s easy to forget or get ground down or under imagine life. So if you’ve got enough visual reminders, it helps.”