Agnès Varda: A Voice Beyond the New Wave

French director Agnès Varda fiction and non-fiction work in the cinema has gone well past her French New Wave and Feminist beginnings to examine and portray a world of compassion, ambiguity and direct visual poetry. This retrospective will look at a combination of both her dramatic and documentary works, from features to shorts.

SCREENINGS WEDNESDAYS AT 8PM

January 28- La Pointe Courte

France, 1956, 80 minutes. Varda, then 25 and a professional photographer, shoots her debut film: an ambiguous love story in a French fishing village, making Pointe Courte the ‘First Feature of the French New Wave’.

February 4- Cléo from 5 to 7

France, 1962, 89 minutes. A real time experiment where a female cabaret singer must wait two hours for the result of a cancer test, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a moody and insightful New Wave Landmark.

February 11- Le Bonheur

France, 1965, 80 minutes. Varda’s first colour feature tells the tale of a carpenter whose affair with his mistress threatens his marriage. Deliberately ambivalent, Le Bonheur still sparks debate today.

February 18- Vagabond

France, 1985, 105 minutes. Varda returned to prominence with this bleak but fascinating portrait of the moral drift of post-1970s youth. The portrait of a fiercely independent but defiantly aimless young woman wandering through wintertime rural France, Vagabond takes the ambivalence of Le Bonheur to its ultimate conclusion.

February 25- 101 Nights at the Movies

France, 1995, 125 minutes. Referencing Scherezade’s spellbinding storytelling, Agnès Varda recalls a century of the cinema through the eyes of an eccentric movie fanatic.

March 4th- The World of Jacques Demy

France, 1995, 91 minutes. In yet another off-beat non-fiction film, Varda looks at the life and work of her late husband Jacques Demy, director of such classics as Donkey Skin, Lola and The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg.

March 25- The Gleaners and I

France, 2000, 82 minutes. A classic low-budget personal documentary shot on a tiny video camera, The Gleaners and I looks at those who pick up the leftovers and throwaways of France’s contemporary consumer culture.

April 1- The Gleaners and I Two Years Later

France, 2001, 67 minutes. Varda revisits some of the people and places first seen in The Gleaners and I.

April 8- Agnès Varda Shorts Program:

Du côté de la côte (1958, 24 minutes) Les Fiancés du Pont Mac Donald (1961, 5 minutes) L’Opéra Mouffe (1958, 17 minutes).