Agnes Varda

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Agnès Varda (born in France) is a film director, photographer, and performer.

Her career was pioneering for, and she was instrumental in the creation of the French New Wave film movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Her films were aimed at achieving documentary realism, addressing feminist issues, and releasing additional sociological commentary with a distinct experimental style. Varda's film based on location in an age where sound technology made it safer and more common to film indoors, with set-ups and painted backdrops of landscapes rather than outside.

Her use of non-professional actors in 1950s French cinema was also unusual.

She received an honorary Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, an Academy Honorary Award, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Early life

Varda was born in Ixelles, Belgium, on May 30, 1928, to Christiane (née Pasquet) and Eugène Jean Varda, an engineer. Her mother was from Sète, France, and her father was a member of a group of Greek refugees from Asia Minor. She was the third of five children. Varda legally changed her first name to Agnès at the age of 18. She and her family survived on a boat in Sète during World War II. Varda obtained a bachelor's degree in literature and psychology from the Sorbonne and spent time at the Lycée et collège Victor-Duruy. She characterized her transfer to Paris as a "fully excruciating" one, with "a vivid recall of my arrival in this gritty, inhuman, sad city." She did not get along with her classmates and called Sorbonne "stupid, antiquated, abstract, [and] scandalously unsuitable for the lofty needs one had at that age."

Personal life and death

Varda met her future husband, Jacques Demy, also a French director, while living in Paris in 1958. In 1959, they were both moved in together. She was married to Demy from 1962 to his death in 1990. Varda had two children: Rosalie Varda (born 1958), a daughter, Rosalie Varda (born 1958), and her son Mathieu Demy (born 1972) with Demy. Rosalie Varda was officially adopted by the Demy as a young girl. Varda appeared on Faces Places with her daughter, who was nominated for an Oscar.

Varda was one of the 343 women to sign the Manifesto of the 343 women admitting to having had an abortion despite the fact that it was illegal in France at the time and insisting that abortion be made law.

Varda was Jean Varda's cousin. Varda's father's cousin met her father's cousin for the first time in 1967 while living in California. Uncle Yanco is the star of her short documentary Uncle Yanco. Jean Varda referred to himself "Yanco" and Varda affectionately referred to as "uncle" due to their age difference.

Varda died of cancer in Paris on March 29, 2019, at the age of 90. On 2 April, she was buried at Montparnasse Cemetery. Catherine Deneuve, Julie Gayet, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jane Birkin, and Sandrine Bonnaire were among those mourning her funeral. On rue Daguerre, the mourners left flowers and potatoes outside her house.

Agnès Varda's death sparked a passionate reaction from the filmmaking community, with Martin Scorsese releasing a tweet, "I seriously doubt that Agnès Varda followed in anyone else's footsteps, whether in any way of her life or art." Every single one of her extraordinary handmade photos, which are so beautifully balanced between documentary and fiction, is like no one else's—every picture, every cut... what a body of work she left behind: large and small, playful and demanding, generous and solitary, lyrical and unflinching... and alive." "This legend was unashamedly fused in work and life," Barry Jenkins wrote on Twitter. She lived "fully" for the past 90 years. Ava DuVernay spoke out about her friendship with Varda, culminating her remarks with "Merci, Agnes." We love your films. Thank you for your passion. Thanks for your light. It's a shining star." Guillermo del Toro, the Safdie brothers, Edgar Wright, JR, and Madonna are among the many filmmakers and artists who paid tribute to Varda. Varda's daughter Rosalie (who created Faces Places) sent her daughter Rosalie (assassination of Agnés) "a kind of photo collage of Agnés...It was something special," Jean-Luc Godard sent. It's a mystery. But he did bring me something nice. Agnès was a biggie, I think. She said, "He saw all her films."

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Photography career

Varda had intended to become a museum curator and studied art history at the École du Louvre but instead, she found photography at the Valiant School of Photography. She began her career as a still photographer before becoming one of the leading voices of the Left Bank Cinema and the French New Wave. "I take pictures or I make films," she maintained a nexuous relationship between photographic and cinematic styles: "I take photographs or I make films." Or, film productions put films in the photos.

Varda reflected on her beginnings with still photography: "I started earning a living from photography straight away, photographing trivial photographs of families and weddings to make money." But first, I wanted to make 'compositions.' "I had the feeling that I was doing something with whom I was asking questions about form, shape, and meaning." Jean Vilar, Jean Vilar, opened the Théâtre National Populaire in 1951 and recruited Varda as the country's official photographer. She began as a stage photographer for the Theatre Festival of Avignon before accepting her position there. She worked at the Théâtre National Populaire for ten years, from 1951 to 1961, during which time her fame soared and she eventually obtained photojournalist positions throughout Europe.

Varda's continuing photography often inspired her subsequent motion pictures. "I shot La Pointe Courte, my first film, without having been an assistant before, without having gone to film school," she said. And with the sole intention of photographing, I began filming, that is, where to position the camera, at what angle, with which lens, and what lighting?

She later recalled another example:

Varda joined Galerie Nathalie Obadia in 2010.

Filmmaking career

Varda's filmmaking career predates the French New Wave, but it does include several elements that are not specific to the time period. 3 Varda, a photographer, became interested in filmmaking, but she claimed she was unaware of the technique and that she had only seen around 20 films by the age of 25. She later said she wrote her first screenplay "just the way a person writes his first book." "I'd like to shoot that script,' and so many colleagues and I formed a joint venture to make it," I thought as I was finishing writing it. She found the filmmaking process difficult because it did not provide the same opportunities as writing a book; she said her approach was instinctive and feminine. Varda said in a video interview with The Believer that she preferred to make films that related to her age (in reference to La Pointe Courte) rather than focusing on traditions or classical norms.

Varda loved photography but was interested in going beyond film. Varda decided to film a feature film of her own after spending a few days filming the tiny French fishing town of La Pointe Courte for a terminally ill friend who could no longer travel on his own. Hence, Varda's first film, La Pointe Courte, about an unhappy couple struggling through their marriage in a small fishing town, was released in 1954. The film is a stylistic precursor to the French New Wave. Varda's time was influenced by Gaston Bachelard's philosophy, under whom she had previously studied at the Sorbonne. "She was particularly interested in his theory of 'l'imagination des matières,' in which certain personality traits were found to correlate to concrete elements in a sort of psychological analysis of the material world." This belief comes to fruition in La Pointe Courte, where the characters' personality traits clash, as shown by the opposition of objects such as wood and steel. Varda used two professional actors, Silvia Monfort and Philippe Noiret, along with the people of La Pointe Courte, to produce a realistic element that lends itself to a documentary aesthetic influenced by neorealism. Varda's films continued to use this combination of fictional and documentary elements.

Varda's companion and fellow "Left Bank" filmmaker Alain Resnais, who was hesitant to work on the film because it was "so much the film he wanted to make himself," and it was very similar to his own Hiroshima mon amour (1959). Resnais, who was composing the film in Varda's apartment, continued to annoy her by comparing the film to others' work by Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni, and others who was "until I became so bored with it that I went to the Cinémathèque to find out what he was talking about." Resnais and Varda were lifelong friends, but Resnais said they had nothing in common "apart from cats." "There is a complete freedom to the style," Cahiers du Cinéma said immediately, giving the appearance that we are in the presence of a work that fulfills only the dreams and aspirations of its auteur with no other external constraints." It's been described by François Truffaut as "an experimental project, innovative, honest, and intelligent." Varda said that the film "hit like a cannonball" because I was a young woman." However, the film was a financial loss, and Varda only made short films for the next seven years.

Varda is regarded as the grandmother and mother of the French New Wave. La Pointe Courte is unofficially but generally considered to be the first film of the movement. It was the first of many times she focused on topics that ordinary people face. She said she was not interested in people in power, but "much more interested in the rebels, the people who fight for their own lives."

Varda made several documentary short films after La Pointe Courte; two of them were sponsored by the French tourist office. These include one of Varda's favorite of her own films, L'opéra-mouffe, a film about the Rue Mouffetard street market, which received an award at the Brussels Experimental Film Festival in 1958.

A pop singer from 5 to 7 follows him through two extraordinary hours in which she awaits the results of a recent biopsy. Varda's film is primarily about a woman coming to terms with her mortality, a typical Varda trope. Cléo From 5 to 7 confronts the traditionally mocked woman by giving Cléo her own vision. She cannot be created through the gaze of others, which is often represented by a montage of reflections and Cléo's ability to strip her body of "to-looked-at" characteristics (such as clothing or wigs). Cléo from 5 to 7 mixes documentary and fiction, as had La Pointe Courte. The film portrays a diegetic event that occurred between 5 and 7 p.m., although its run-time is 89 minutes.

Varda founded Ciné-Tamaris, a 1977 film company, in order to have more control over shooting and editing. Agnès Varda, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's first American exhibition, was held in Californialand in 2013. It featured a sculpture installation, several photographs, and short films, and it was inspired by time she lived in Los Angeles in the 1960s.

Varda created Sans toit ni law in 1985 ("without roof nor law); in most English-speaking countries, it is Vagabond). A story about Mona's disappearance of a young female drifter named Mona was published. The death is being investigated by an unheard and unheard interviewer who focuses on the people who never saw her again. Through nonlinear methods, Vagabond is told, with the film divided into 47 episodes, and each episode about Mona told from a different perspective. Vagabond is one of Varda's most influential feminist films due to how the film explores the female body from a male perspective.

Varda made the film Jacquot de Nantes, which is about his life and death, right after her husband Jacques Demy's death. The film is categorized as a recreation of his early life and is obsessed with the variety of crafts used for filmmaking, including animation and set design. Varda, on the other hand, adds clips from Demy's films as well as a video of him dying. Varda's common theme of accepting death continues in the film, but Varda's tribute to her late husband and their work is at its heart.

Varda's interactions with gleaners (harvesters) who live in the French countryside were examined in Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (The Gleaners and I), a documentary that also includes artists who produce art from recycled materials, as well as an interview with psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche. Varda's first film used digital cameras is notable for its fragmented and free-form nature, as well as being the first time Varda used digital cameras. This style of filmmaking is often thought of as a proof that great things like art can still be made from scraps, but modern economies insist that people use only the highest quality product.

Varda co-directed Faces Places with JR in 2017. The film was screened out of competition at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, where it received the L'il d'or award. Varda and JR are on film in rural France shooting portraits of the people they encounter. Varda was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for this film, making her the oldest person to be nominated for a competitive Oscar. Although the nomination was her first, Varda did not think it was important, saying, "There is nothing to be proud of, but happy." We're happies because we make movies we love. We make films so that you love the movie." Varda and JR are seen knocking on Jean-Luc Godard's front door in Rolle for an interview at the end of the film. Godard consented to the meeting but "stands them up."

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