Agnès Varda

Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda speaking at a retrospective series at the Harvard Film Archive
Born	30 May 1928 (1928-05-30) (age 81) Brussels, Belgium
Occupation	director, screenwriter, editor, actor, producer, installation artist, photographer
Years active	1955 - present

Agnès Varda (born 30 May 1928) is a French film director. Her movies, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary — with a distinct experimental style.

Life

Varda was born Arlette Varda in Brussels, Belgium, to a Greek father and French mother. Her father's family were Greek refugees from Asia Minor.

Varda studied Art History at the Ecole du Louvre before getting a job as the official photographer for the Théâtre National Populaire in Paris.¹ She liked photography but was interested in moving into film. After spending a few days filming the small French fishing town of La Pointe Courte for a terminally ill friend who could no longer visit on his own, Varda decided to shoot a feature film of her own. Thus in 1954, Varda’s first film, La Pointe Courte, about an unhappy couple working through their relationship in a small fishing town, was released. The film is a stylistic precursor to the French New Wave.²

Despite similarities to the French New Wave, films by Varda belonged more precisely to the complementary Rive Gauche (Left Bank Cinema) movement, along with Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jean Cayrol and Henri Colpi. The group was strongly tied to the nouveau roman movement in literature and politically was positioned in the Left. Like the French New Wave, its members would often collaborate with each other.

Agnès Varda was married to the film director Jacques Demy from 1962 until his death in 1990.

Award

For the 1985 documentary-style feature film Vagabond/Without Roof or Rule she received the Golden Lion of the Venice Film Festival. In 2009 " The Beaches of Agnes" won the best documentary film of the Cesar Award.³ On April 12, 2009, she was made Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur.⁴

Selected filmography

References

External links

• Agnès Varda at the Internet Movie Database
• Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
• Ciné-Tamaris
• Jonathan Romney, The Beaches of Agnès (Sight & Sound 'Film of the Month')

Further reading

• How Agnès Varda "invented" the New Wave by Ginette Vincendeau, Four by Agnes Varda, Criterion, 2008
• Smith, Alison. Agnès Varda Manchester University Press, 1998. Pg 3.
• Neupert, Richard. A History of the French New Wave Cinema. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI. 2007. Pg 57.

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