Agnès Varda

Three short films touching on the art and emotional resonance of photography.

An intimate, picaresque inquiry into French life, as lived by the country's poor and its provident, as well as by the film's own director, Agnès Varda. The aesthetic, political and finally moral point of departure for Varda are gleaners, those individuals who pick at already-reaped fields for the odd potato, the leftover turnip, and in previous generations were immortalized by the likes of Millet and Van Gogh. (Zeitgeist Films)

Cleo, a singer and hypochondriac, becomes increasingly worried that she might have cancer while awaiting test results from her doctor.

In winter in the south of France, a young woman is found frozen in a ditch. She's ill kempt, a vagabond... (imdb)

Varda's exuberantly inventive follow-up to her critically lauded essay film, in which she revisits characters from the original and further explores what it means to be a 'gleaner.'

Monsieur Cinema, a hundred years old, lives alone in a large villa. His memories fade away, so he engages a young woman to tell him stories about all the movies ever made... (imdb)

Francois is a young carpenter married with Therese. They have two little children. All goes well, life is beautiful, the sun shines and the birds sing. One day, Francois meets Emilie, they fall in love and become lovers. He still loves his wife and wants to share his new greater happiness with her. (imdb)

A young woman arrives on the Paris train at the port of Sète, where she is met by her husband who grew up there. Not sure whether she wants to continue their marriage, she has come to talk it through. As the couple wander around the fishermen's quarter, the film shows the life of its inhabitants. (Wikipedia)

A half-hour photo montage made up of 1500 out of over 4000 pictures Agnes Varda took while vacationing in Cuba.

Ydessa Hendeles' exhibition entitled "The living and the Artificial" (consisting of works of art all comprising a photograph of living persons in the company of one or several teddy bears) had puzzled Agnès Varda so much that she decided to go to Toronto where the artist lives and interview her. In front of Agnes Varda's DV camera, Ydessa tells about the singularity of her artistic approach. She also expresses herself about the Holocaust, which both her parents survived. (imdb)

A humorous travelogue of the French Riviera. (imdb)

A subtitle warns, "Beware of dark sunglasses." Anna and her lover, whose looks in bowler and bow tie are reminiscent of a young Buster Keaton, kiss chastely on a bridge overlooking the Seine. He dons sunglasses and waves as she runs down a stairway to the river's edge, then watches in horror as she's knocked flat and loaded into the back of a hearse. In vain, he gives chase. Disconsolate, he buys a large funeral wreath and a handkerchief from sympathetic vendors... (imdb)

Impressions of the rue Mouffetard, Paris 5, through the eyes of a pregnant woman. (imdb)

Autobiographical documentary about the life of director Agnes Varda. (imdb)

What does being a woman really mean? How do women live the status society reserves for them? A group of women, beautiful or not, young or not, gifted with motherly instinct or not, answer before Agnès Varda's camera. (imdb)

An apprentice fortune teller and amateur magician randomly meet and form a bond. (myself)

Documentary on the small shopkeepers of the rue Daguerre in Paris, where the film-maker lived.

Short film about stairs in cinema.

In seven different parts, Godard, Klein, Lelouch, Marker, Resnais and Varda show their sympathy for the North-Vietnamees army during the Vietnam-war. (imdb)

This is a cinematic tribute by Agnes Varda to her late husband Jacques Demy, with some fascinating interviews and archive footage, moving back and forth chronologically from Demy's breakthrough film LOLA, to some of his later work including an abortive attempt to break through in Hollywood, with an interesting revelation about a then unknown American actor named Harrison Ford. (imdb)

Lion's Love is a pseudo-documentary with no concrete direction. It asks us to be voyeurs of three people who define cavalierism.. An oddly fascinating look at late 60's America via the very french Varda.

The 30 minute long film looks at a rally to free the party's leader, Huey P. Newton. There's no pretense of objectivity -- the Black Panther Party shared in the copyright. Speakers at the rally included Bobby Seale, Stokely Carmichael, and H. Rap Brown, and there's also a short interview with Newton, in prison.

An unusual visit to a large, empty apartment. Is it empty or not? Maybe a family has lived there or is going to live there...Maybe a young girl is going to escape from there...Maybe some of the old-timers who lived there have never left. The walls themselves tell the stories of the time passing by.

Mary-Jane asks, "Do all women fall in love with a boy, or just those without sons?" She's divorced with two daughters, Lucy and Loulou. Lucy has a party where Mary-Jane notices Julien, 14, small and brassy, but she sees a sensitive side. She contrives to spend time with him and lets him know she's available to him. (imdb)

Jacquot Demy is a little boy at the end of the thirties. His father owns a garage and his mother is a hairdresser. The whole family lives happily and likes to sing and to go to the movies. Jacquot is fascinated by every kind of show (theatre, cinema, puppets). He buys a camera to shoot his first amateur film. (imdb)

Documentary about Les Demoiselles de Rochefort and it's director Jacques Demy made by his wife 25 years after the film.

A walk around the castles of the Loire shown in chronological order of their construction, with comments including poems of the sixteenth century and reflections of gardeners. (mubi.com)

This short film is a variation on the romantic twists, but it can also be the delusion of any couple in love, in places as perfect as the Mosque of the King in Ispahan, a point of convergence between sacred art and the profane. (makingoff.org)

A short documentary on the neo-classical statues found throughout Paris, predominantly on the walls of buildings, holding up windows, roofs etc. (imdb)

At the sea shore, a goat, a child, and a naked man. This is a photograph taken in 1954 by Agnès Varda. The goat was dead, the child was named Ulysses, and the man was naked. Starting from this frozen image, the film explores the real and the imaginary. (mubi.com)

Continuation of 1984's Les Dites Cariatides.

Images and poems about a celebrity couple: Louis Aragon and Elsa Triolet. Elsa's youth is related by Aragon and commented on by Elsa.

This movie tells two stories: the birth of a novel, and the life of a couple culminating in the birth of their child. All the people the husband meets on their Breton Island get absorbed into this book, transformed and distorted. They are the pawns in a fascinating chess game on a life-sized board he plays with the forces of evil and destruction. Of course this fantastic game in which the destinies of the characters are resolved is only imaginary. Or is it? (MUBI)

While in San Francisco for the promotion of her last film in October 1967, Agnès Varda, tipped by her friend Tom Luddy, gets to know a relative she had never heard of before, Jean Varda, nicknamed "Yanco". This hitherto unknown uncle lives on a boat in Sausalito, is a painter, has adopted a hippie lifestyle and loves life. The meeting is a very happy one. (imdb)

The intertwined lives of 2 women in 1970's France, set against the progress of the women's movement in which Agnes Varda was involved. Pomme and Suzanne meet when Pomme helps Suzanne obtain an abortion after a third pregnancy which she cannot afford. They lose contact but meet again ten years later. Despite the contrast they remain friends and share in the various dramas of each others' lives, in the process affirming their different female identities. (imdb)

Venturing from Venice Beach to Watts, Agnès Varda looks at the murals of LA as backdrop to and mirror of the city's many cultures. She casts a curious eye on graffiti and photorealism, roller disco & gang violence, evangelical Christians, Hare Krishnas, artists, angels and ordinary Angelenos. (Mubi)

The trailer for the Vienna International Film Festival 2004.

A 14-year-old girl opens a package containing a magical magenta ball dress ten times her teenage size. Jasmine enters the folds of the dress, into a modern anti-fairy tale and everyday empowerment. (imdb)

An eccentric portrait of actress Jane Birkin and her life, loves, and career.

A young French woman, separated from her lover, tries to find a lodging in L.A. for herself and her son. (imdb)

Director Agnes Varda and photographer/muralist J.R. journey through rural France and form an unlikely friendship. (imdb)

A short film about Varda's cats.

A short piece in which Agnes Varda revisits actress Marthe Jarnias, who plays the old aunt in her 1985 film "Vagabond".

A television film made by Agnès Varda. Very much based on her own life, the film follows a girl, whose father is from Greece, studying ancient art in France. The film was never broadcast for political reasons related to its portrayal of Greeks, and is now only available in reconstructed form.

More than 40 years after making "Cléo de 5 à 7," Agnès Varda invites her star, two other cast members, and her assistant directors to look back. She takes us through the film, from opening scene to the end, visiting its Paris locales, placing her aged actors in the same spots, telling stories, and listening to others' reflections on the making of the film. She and they talk about making a film on a low budget, its showing at Cannes, and trying to fix a problem in the last shot. Her assistant

The much-anticipated follow up to Agnes Varda's masterful THE BEACHES OF AGNES, FROM HERE TO THERE is a five part documentary series that chronicles the indefatigable filmmaker's travels around the world, meeting friends, artists and filmmakers for an expansive view of the global contemporary art scene. Whether in Los Angeles or St. Petersburg, Lisbon or Mexico, Varda finds herself talking with Alexander Sokurov, sharing a meal with sculptor Christian Boltanski and his partner artist Annette Mes

Agnès Varda, photographer, installation artist and pioneer of the Nouvelle Vague, takes a seat on a theatre stage and uses photos and film excerpts to provide an insight into her unorthodox oeuvre. (imdb)

Short, warm story about one of Varda's friends...

Agnès Varda revisits the Rue Daguerre where she lived 30 years earlier and had filmed Daguerreotypes.

With 16mm camera in hand, Agnès Varda filmed 42nd Street in 1967, shooting passersby to the beat of The Doors. Pier Paolo Pasolini is with her, getting lost in the lights, bodies, faces and chaos of a crowded and multicultural New York. (imdb)