Agnès Varda

Agnès de ci de là Varda

Agnès de ci de là Varda

A freewheeling travelogue, a kaleidoscopic survey of the contemporary art scene, and a loving ode to creativity in all its forms, this five-part miniseries by the inimitable Agnès Varda takes us on a journey of discovery as she travels the globe—from Stockholm to St. Petersburg, Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City to Los Angeles—meeting with friends, artists, and fellow filmmakers. Along the way there are chats with titan auteurs Chris Marker (offering a window into his virtual reality world) and a 102-year-old Manoel de Oliveira (doing his best Chaplin impersonation); visits to the Hermitage Museum, the Venice Biennale, and the home of Frida Kahlo; glimpses into the studios of acclaimed visual artists like Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager, and Pierre Soulages; and Varda’s casually profound musings on everything from rivers to the Dutch masters to her own photography and installation works. Never before released in the United States, this catalog of wonders great and small is a unique invitation to see the world through the eyes of one of cinema’s most playfully perceptive artists.

Film Info

  • France
  • 2011
  • 235 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.77:1
  • French, English

Available In

Collector's Set

The Complete Films of Agnès Varda

The Complete Films of Agnès Varda

Blu-ray Box Set

15 Discs

$199.96

Agnès de ci de là Varda
Credits
Director
Agnès Varda
Written by
Agnès Varda
Cinematography by
Agnès Varda
Cinematography by
Julia Fabry
Sound
Jean-Lionel Etcheverry
Edited by
Johan Boulanger
Edited by
Jean-Baptiste Morin
Edited by
Agnès Varda
Music by
Laurent Levesque
Assistant
Julia Fabry

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Agnès Varda

Writer, Director

Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda

The only female director of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda has been called both the movement’s mother and its grandmother. The fact that some have felt the need to assign her a specifically feminine role, and the confusion over how to characterize that role, speak to just how unique her place in this hallowed cinematic movement—defined by such decidedly masculine artists as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut—is. Varda not only made films during the nouvelle vague, she helped inspire it. Her self-funded debut, the fiction-documentary hybrid 1956’s La Pointe Courte is often considered the unofficial first New Wave film; when she made it, she had no professional cinema training (her early work included painting, sculpting, and photojournalism). Though not widely seen, the film got her commissions to make several documentaries in the late fifties. In 1962, she released the seminal nouvelle vague film Cléo from 5 to 7; a bold character study that avoids psychologizing, it announced her official arrival. Over the coming decades, Varda became a force in art cinema, conceiving many of her films as political and feminist statements, and using a radical objectivity to create her unforgettable characters. She describes her style as cinécriture (writing on film), and it can be seen in formally audacious fictions like Le bonheur and Vagabond as well as more ragged and revealing autobiographical documentaries like The Gleaners and I and The Beaches of Agnès.