Other aspects of his work in the area of Scandinavian cinema include his service on the "Quality Awards" Jury of the Swedish Film Institute for 11 years from the 1970s where he was its only non-Nordic member.
In 1989 he was decorated by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden with the Royal Order of the Polar Star for his services to Swedish culture.
The Godfather Book (Faber, London, 1997) examined Coppola's trilogy of films, and after a visit to Monument Valley in Utah, he wrote an analysis of Ford's films which were shot there, John Ford and the American West (Abrams, New York, 2004), examining the importance of the location and the influences of 19th Century American painting.
[7] He has provided more than a dozen voice-over audio commentaries for DVD versions of classic films which form part of The Criterion Collection.
In 2016, he moderated on-stage conversations with Sir Alan Parker, Jaco van Dermal, and Michael Roskam for the MEDIA Program's 25th anniversary celebrations in Brussels.
[9] In 2008, Cowie co-edited Projections: The European Film Academy (Faber, London), and was a contributing editor to the Taschen volume, The Ingmar Bergman Archives.