Agnes Varda

 

Inspiration for this entry came from the press news that was released just a month before the launch of the 2023 Toronto International Film festival, Festival CEO Cameron Bailey unveiled a new café-bar in her name.  On the 3^rd floor of TiFF Bell Lightbox - a crown jewel establishment for Film screenings in Toronto.  As for this blog’s writer, my introduction to Varda came just pre-covid era, I was listening to a Varda themed podcast, - A Marathon from the Chicago based cinephiles known as Filmspotting an extremely articulate and well verse set of film reviewers who covered Varda's films and the contributing impact of each of her works.

So who is Varda?

Most sources would reference her as the mother of French New Wave, she was known to be both a filmmaker and documentarian who writes, directs and producers all her own works.  A natural Auteur,  who began as an official photographer of Jean Vilar’s Theatre National Populaire, and claimed she had no formal film study training, which fits the new wave pre-requisite, of filming by unconventional methods. Varda’s debut film was La Pointe Courte (1954) in which she wrote and directed, it was a budgeted feature that contrasted a young couple’s marital problems with the struggles of fishermen and their families in a small village. The narrative structure would be the precursor to devices used by France’s New Wave Directors.  In fact, Francois Truffaut who is a recognized director and film critic, and one of leading pioneer of French New wave wrote a comment about La Pointe Courte.   “It is difficult to form a judgment of a film in which the true and the false, the true-false and the false-true are intermingled according to barley perceived rules”.     Varda would go on to work on several short films; (two of which was commissioned by the French National Tourist Office) before working on her next feature

Delving deeper into narrative and capturing life in the moment was the release of Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962) The film observes two hours  (in real time) in the life of a spoiled nightclub singer as she waits for the medical verdict on whether she live or die from cancer.  In the film every trivial incident takes in a new significance for the main character and Paris is seen as if for the last (or first) time.  Followed up by Le Bonheur (1965) an odd love triangle movie.  At this point critics complained about the surfeit of visual elegance in both of these movies, for  which to be honest is a mild critique, as now Varda had established herself as a filmmaker to watch.   In the mid to late 70’s and throughout the 80’s Varda  got involved in the women’s movement and her work reflected that time, she also began work on imaginative documentaries  (cine-poetic  essays),  two  US made documentaries  Uncle Yanko,  and The Black Panthers (1968)   Varda did two more films including Lions Love, in which she also appeared in, before concentrating on documentaries for the next several years until the release of the Vagabond (1985).  One of her highly praised works. A powerful near-documentary style that looks at the events leading to the death of a young drifter.  In 1991, she paid tribute to her late husband Director Jacques Demy in Jacquot a film that filters her late husband’s life through films he made, and before her own passing she made “Varda by Agnes  “     a two part minis series documentary where she sheds light on her own experience and insight of film making.