Staff Picks
10 Films by Agnès Varda 1928-2019
- Keith B.
- Friday, March 29, 2019
Collection
The great director made her first film, La Pointe Courte, in 1955 and her last, Faces Places, in 2017.
The mother of the French New Wave, she earned a well deserved late career resurgence with her lovely, inventive documentary The Gleaners and I.
She was the first woman director to be recognized with an honorary Oscar, which she received at the 2018 Academy Awards where she was also nominated for her work on Faces Places.
The Beaches of Agnes
Published in 2010
Provides a reflection on art, life, and the movies through a rich cinematic self portrait that touches on everything from the feminist movement and the Black Panthers to the films of Agnes Varda's husband, Jacques Demy, and the birth of the French New Wave.
The Beaches of Agnès
Published in 2010
A reflection on art, life and the movies, The Beaches of Agnes is a magnificent film from the great Agnes Varda, director of The Gleaners and I and Cleo from 5 to 7, a richly cinematic self portrait that touches on everything from the feminist movement and the Black Panthers to the films of husband Jacques Demy (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and the birth of the French New Wave.
Le Bonheur
Published in 2007
Though married to the good-natured, beautiful Thérèse, young husband and father François finds himself falling unquestioningly into an affair with an attractive postal worker. One of Agnès Varda's most provocative films, Le bonheur examines, with a deceptively cheery palette and the spirited strains of Mozart, the ideas of fidelity and happiness in a modern, self-centered world.
Cinevardaphoto
Published in 2012
Three short films touching on the art and emotional resonance of photography from director Agnes Varda are collected in this compilation feature.
Cinevardaphoto
Published in 2010
"From Agnès Varda comes the wonderful Cinevardaphoto, a triptych of short films exploring the power and vitality of the photograph. In Ydessa, the bears, and etc., Varda discovers a haunting exhibit of found photos; in each one, a teddy bear. With Ulysses, she deconstructs a picture from her early career as a photographer, while ... Salut les cubains uses still photos to capture the spirit of the Cuban Revolution's early days."--Container.
Cléo from 5 to 7
Published in 2000
A girl waiting for the result of a medical examination wanders around Paris thinking she has cancer.
Faces Places
Published in 2018
Acclaimed French film maker Agnes Varda and photographer JR set out on a trip through France to meet locals and produce epic sized murals and form an unlikely friendship along the way.
Faces Places
Published in 2018
Filmmaker Agnes Varda and photographer JR set out on a trip through France to meet locals and produce epic sized murals and form an unlikely friendship along the way.
The Gleaners and I
Published in 2002
An intimate, picturesque inquiry into French life as lived by the country's poor, as well as by the film's own director. Gleaners are people who pick at already reaped fields for the odd potato, the leftover turnip, etc. DVD includes the sequel.
One Sings, The Other Doesn't
Published in 1977
A buoyant hymn to sisterly solidarity rooted in the hard-won victories of a generation of women, this is one of Agnès Varda's warmest and most politically trenchant films, a feminist musical for the ages.
La Pointe-Courte
Published in 2007
The great Agnes Varda's film career began with this graceful, penetrating study of a marriage on the rocks, set against the backdrop of a small Mediterranean fishing village. Both a stylized depiction of the complicated relationship between a married couple and a documentary-like look at the daily struggles of the locals, Varda's discursive, gorgeously filmed debut was radical enough to later be considered one of the progenitors of the coming French new wave.
Uncle Yanco. Black Panthers
Published in 2015
The legendary French filmmaker Agnes Varda (Cleo from 5 to 7), whose remarkable career began in the 1950s and has continued into the twenty-first century, produced some of her most provocative works while living on the West Coast of the United States.
Vagabond
Published in 1998
Mona, an aimless drifter in the French countryside, deeply touches the lives of the people she meets and confronts them with her own ideas of freedom.