At the 77th Edinburgh International Film Festival, Charles and Graham take the opportunity to interview documentary filmmaker, author, curator and former EIFF director, Mark Cousins and talk to him, in particular, about his latest book, Dear Orson Welles and Other Essays, a series of ‘conversations’ with the artists, poets, directors, and filmmakers who have most influenced and inspired him, from Orson Welles to Tilda Swinton.

Mark Cousins is a documentary filmmaker, author and curator. His films have dealt with subjects such as neo-Nazism, childhood imagination and the cinema of Iran. His feature The First Movie won the Prix Italia. His most recent film, The Story of Film: An Odyssey took six years to make. As an author, he has published several books, including Imagining Reality, The Faber Book of Documentary (as co-editor), the acclaimed book The Story of Film, published in Europe, the United States and Asia, the collection of essays on cinema: Watching Real People Elsewhere. Mark also famously took the Edinburgh International Film Festival to Sarajevo during that city's siege. He was co-artistic director of Cinema China, and of the Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams, part of his ongoing collaboration with Tilda Swinton. They recently devised a cinema in Beijing and did A Pilgrimage, in which they pulled a cinema across Scotland. He is honorary doctor of letters at the University of Edinburgh. In the past, Cousins directed and presented the BBC's Scene by Scene, which ran for five years, screening career interviews with, among others, Martin Scorsese, Jane Russell, Paul Schrader, Bernardo Bertolucci, David Lynch, Roman Polanski, Jeanne Moreau and Rod Steiger.

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Graham discusses the decline of main stream films since the 1970s after having recently watching Woody Allen's Manhattan (1979) and John Landis's Animal House (1978).

Coming up at the 77th Edinburgh International Film Festival what are Graham and Charles looking forward to?

Charles reflects on Banksy’s latest artwork series, the coverage it has attracted across the media and what the street art might mean.

Finally, Graham also discloses his idea for a play, though not entirely serious about writing it.

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Graham and Charles are looking forward to the 77th Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Graham previews a new exhibition at Red House Art Gallery in Harrogate by Dan Baldwin

Charles highlights the York Purple Signs campaign, and especially their posters trying to establish behaviour patterns in relation to drink. Go Steady! We’ve got enough history. Respect your bar staff. Gratitude not Attitude.

Graham is super excited to preview some of his upcoming talking events (including a new Vinyl Session) coming up in the autumn.

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