We’re kicking off our Agnès Varda season this week with the sold out La Pointe Courte, and we’ve got nine more of her titles screening throughout the year. So whether you plan to watch all the films that we’re showing, or you’re going to see a select few, here’s our guide to the ten films in our Agnès Varda retrospective.
About Agnès Varda
Image courtesy of Photofest
“Varda was for too long relegated to a marginal role in the history of the New Wave [...] It took the work of feminist historians, notably Sandy Flitterman-Lewis in the 1990s, to reinstate her at the heart of the New Wave and of post-war French cinema.”- Ginette Vincendeau
Agnès Varda was born Arlette Varda in 1928 in Ixelles, Belgium, to a French mother and a Greek father. In 1940, Varda and her family relocated to Sète, her mother’s hometown in France. Varda studied photography in Paris, and served as the official photographer for the Théatre National Populaire from 1951 to 1961, during which time her interest in film and theatre developed.
Varda was aged 25 and working as a photographer in 1954, the year that she decided to direct a film set in La Pointe Courte, a small Mediterranean fishing village. The resulting film, La Pointe Courte, was released in 1955, and it was a debut that was set to later be regarded as an important precursor to the French New Wave.
Agnès Varda on the set of La Pointe Courte
Varda continued to direct throughout her life, producing a total of 39 feature and short films throughout her unique career. In the final year of her life, aged ninety, Varda directed her final film: Varda by Agnès.
La Pointe Courte (1955)
La Pointe Courte screens at The Lexi on Tuesday 30 January
Released in 1955, La Pointe Courte was Varda’s first ever film. With a combination of documentary style insights into the daily struggles of La Pointe Courte’s locals, and a meandering study of a troubled marriage, as a young couple travel to the village in the hope of rescuing their relationship. With the two leads played by professional actors, and the residents played by actual locals, it was an experimental take on filmmaking, which earned Varda instant acclaim.
Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)
Cléo from 5 to 7 screens at The Lexi on Tuesday 20 February
Released in 1961, Cléo from 5 to 7 follows a singer, Florence, grappling with her own mortality. Set during a mere 2 hours of Florence’s life, the young woman anxiously awaits the results of a biopsy. As with La Pointe Courte, Varda continues to meld documentary with fiction - and it’s highly regarded as an important highlight of the French New Wave.
Le Bonheur (1965)
Le Bonheur is showing on Tuesday 26 March
One of Varda’s more subversive titles, Le Bonheur sets a story of infidelity against an idyllic visual and musical backdrop, as young husband and father François begins an affair with an attractive postal worker. “The happiness alluded to in the title of Agnès Varda’s 1965 drama of adultery in a working-class Paris suburb stings with whiplash irony,” writes Richard Brody for The New York Times.
One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977)
One Sings, the Other Doesn’t screens on Tuesday 30 April
One Sings, the Other Doesn’t follows two women across fourteen years, during a new epoch for feminism in France, which saw the emergence of the Mouvement de libération des femmes in 1970. The film traces the lives of aspiring singer Pomme and struggling young mother Suzanne, as the two friends strive for freedom over their own lives and their own bodies.
Vagabond (1985)
Vagabond shows on Tuesday 28 May at The Lexi Cinema
Described by Peter Bradshaw for The Guardian as “as cool, enigmatic and as gripping as any thriller”, Vagabond uses a nonlinear plot to retrace the steps of Mona, a young drifter found dead at the beginning of the film. Earning Sandrine Bonnaire a César award for her portrayal of the defiant young woman, while Varda won the top award at the Venice Film Festival, the Golden Lion.
Jacquot de Nantes (1991)
Jacquot de Nantes Screens on Tuesday 25 June
Moving into the nineties, we arrive at Jacquot de Nantes: a film which Varda realised on behalf of her husband, director Jacques Demy, who became too ill to direct the film himself, passing away in 1990. An exploration of Demy’s childhood in occupied Nantes, France, and his innate fascination with creating. Interspersed with footage of Demy’s life as an older man, it’s a poignant story of both the early years and very last years of a gifted artist, and a gift from one great creative force to another.
The Gleaners and I (2000)
The Gleaners and I shows on Tuesday 24 September
A fascinating documentary about the ancient art of gleaning: a form of food recovery which sees its participants forage for leftover harvest in the countryside. Featuring Varda’s first use of digital cameras, Varda here is herself a gleaner of images and ideas, crafting a feature documentary out of odds and ends that she comes across. “ For an essay on the immorality of our consumer culture, The Gleaners and I is surprisingly lighthearted and hopeful”, writes Elise Nakhnikian for Slant Magazine.
The Beaches of Agnès (2008)
The Beaches of Agnès shows on Tuesday 24 September
Made when Varda was eighty, The Beaches of Agnès is a gorgeous autobiographical documentary, which sees the veteran filmmaker return to places from her past. A beautiful collage combining a variety of techniques, what emerges is a picture of the places which helped to shape Varda: from the beaches of Belgium where she spent her childhood, to the fishing village where she produced her first ever film. The Beaches of Agnès was set to be Varda’s final film - but in the manner of many artistic greats, Varda in fact went on to produce more films!
Faces Places (2017)
Faces Places screens on Tuesday 29 October
The Oscar-nominated documentary Faces Places sees Varda team up with French photographer and street artist JR. Together, the duo roam villages, towns and factories in France, meeting with communities and individuals, and creating larger-than-life portraits of the characters they meet. A charming and bittersweet road movie, Sukdhev Sandhu, writing for Sight & Sound, calls it ‘a wonderful exercise in memory and merriment, in instinct and improvisation’.
Varda by Agnès (2019)
Varda by Agnès shows on Tuesday 26 November
Varda’s last ever film is full of the characteristic playfulness and joie de vivre that defines Varda’s masterful filmmaking. Varda takes us on a tour through her six-decade filmmaking career, and is filled with her personal reflections on all manner of topics from feminism to filmmaking, and touching reminiscences on the people and places, the objects and ideas, which characterised her remarkable career.
As every single one of our A Year with Agnès screenings is on a Tuesday, members will be able to take advantage of our Buddy Movie Tuesdays offer and bring a friend for free!
Gen Sandle
Lexi Marketing and Comms
