THE story of Belfast on the big screen is a limited one, to say the least. There are iconic appearances in films like Odd Man Out, of course, but mostly the city has been hugely undersold, mostly relegated to providing rain-sodden backdrops for war-torn sagas of sectarian struggle and small-scale tales of 70s survival.
Beautiful, and boasting a rich history as it does, it’s never been afforded the kind of dreamy cinematic love letters that other great cities have.
That’s where I Am Belfast, the latest offering from film-maker, writer and cultural commentator Mark Cousins comes in.
Debuting at last year’s Belfast Film Festival and opening tonight at the QFT before it appears on DVD/Blu-ray through the BFI this June, it’s a work of rare beauty and real warmth. It deserves to be seen by as wide an audience as possible.
Taking a painterly view of his hometown, Cousins, who now resides in Edinburgh, returns to his old haunts and meets a woman who claims to be the city itself. Wise and graceful and claiming to be 10,000 years old, the woman, played by Helena Bereen, guides our unseen film-maker around the streets, exploring the rich, often tragic history of Belfast.
A heartfelt tone poem to the city, I Am Belfast is a wilfully weird take on our social and cultural history that frames the tales of yesterday in a gorgeous, gently drifting visual dream. The slow-moving images of the natural beauty of the coastline together with the occasionally random reminiscences and unapologetically poetic bending of the narrative mean it won’t appeal to everyone but go with its evocative flow and the rewards are many.
The cinematography of Christopher Doyle (that previously graced In The Mood For Love and 2046) is simply stunning and the carefully chosen archival clips from both periods of peace and violent conflict are powerful and effective throughout.
There’s a fine soundtrack from local composer David Holmes (Oceans 11, 71, Hunger) to savour as well. The story goes Holmes scored the film as it was shooting but his cues match the dreamlike vibe of Cousins’s narrative perfectly.
The director himself has cited the storytelling of his grandparents as being as strong an influence on the finished film as the more obvious debt to European art cinema and the work of similarly rooted film-makers like Terence Davis. You can hear that rich tradition for the spoken word and the story in the personal reminiscences and the gentle ache for the past that seeps through almost every frame of this emotional journey.
Romantic and political in equal measure, I Am Belfast is a passionate and hugely personal picture of an inspirational place in the director’s life.
Cousins has travelled deep into his own history to return to his roots and revisit his hometown through the eyes of someone who left it many years back. The result is a film that pops and crackles with invention and genuine affection for a place and its people. See it and see the city through fresh eyes.
