Agnès Varda

Agnès Varda chose to focus on the hanging mobile Vertical Foliage (1941), which she came across during a visit to the Calder Foundation in New York. In When Sandy Dreams, Varda melds footage of the sea and the mobile in motion with photographs she took in 1952 of Calder on the beach in the south of France. “I put these images together thinking of how the slight wind on the beach would move the mobile,” says Varda. In doing so, she bridges admiration for her old friend with her powerful connection to the ocean—a common motif in her visual art and the vessel through which she looked back on her life in the 2008 documentary The Beaches of Agnès.

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Director Agnès Varda and photographer/muralist JR journey through rural France and form an unlikely friendship.

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“Miss Jasmine! I have a package for you!” The 14-year-old girl with braces takes a break from milking the goat. Her local postman has delivered a surprise. She opens it up. Out floats a magical magenta ball dress ten times her teenage size. “I am curious,” she says, and enters the folds of the dress. From here, Jasmine⎯headstrong, a dreamer, a realist⎯takes us on a modern anti-fairy tale through caves and stalagmites, streets and shop windows, obsessions and everyday empowerment.

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Thirteen filmmakers share personal reflections on Henri Langlois—the visionary founder of the Cinémathèque Française—recounting his influence on their lives, his role in preserving film history, and his enduring impact on world cinema.

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On the occasion of the Henri Langlois Centenary (2014), Agnès Varda recounts a memory.

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The 3 lives of Agnès Varda: photographer, filmmaker and visual artist.

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Since 1995, the Viennale has invited renowned directors to create short, one-minute films as personal contributions to the festival. Ranging from home movies to political essays, musical sketches to abstract studies, these “little films” form a unique anthology of cinematic moments. 20 Little Films collects a selection of these works, premiering together for the Viennale’s 50th anniversary at the Locarno Film Festival.

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This profile of street artists Jérôme Mesnager and Miss Tic was shot by director Agnès Varda in Paris between 2006 and 2012.

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Agnès Varda takes us on a journey of discovery as she travels the globe—from Stockholm to St. Petersburg, Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City to Los Angeles—meeting with friends, artists, and fellow filmmakers.

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Two friends (and legendary French New Wave filmmakers) meet in real and virtual worlds.

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Agnès Varda travels around the world to meet friends, artists and filmmakers for an expansive view of the global contemporary art scene.

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Projection of a photograph, video in loop, sand

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Film director Agnes Varda captures the creation of a beach in front of her home in Rue Daguerre, for the film 'The Beaches of Agnes'.

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A short program in which the participants describe how they fell in love with cinema.

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This 2009 featurette, directed by Agnès Varda, gives an inside look into how her team set up THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS’s beach trapeze sequences.

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Director Agnès Varda gathers some of her collaborators from JACQUOT DE NANTES to discuss their experiences making the film, as well as show Varda wove her grief over the loss of her husband, Jacques Demy, into other projects.

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Filmmaking icon Agnès Varda, the award-winning director regarded by many as the grandmother of the French new wave, turns the camera on herself with this unique autobiographical documentary. Composed of film excerpts and elaborate dramatic re-creations, Varda's self-portrait recounts the highs and lows of her professional career, the many friendships that affected her life and her longtime marriage to cinematic giant Jacques Demy.

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In 2007, the French filmmaker and my dear friend Agnès Varda called me before coming to L.A. with a question: would I agree to let her film my L.A. story? The video you are about to watch is the story of our first encounter in Paris in 1996 and in the years since, how our shared reverence for cinema formed the bonds of an everlasting friendship, and how the Cinematheque became like home.

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Agnes Varda introduces a collection of her short films released to DVD.

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A documentary film directed by French Agnès Varda as an extension of the exhibition 'L'île et elle'. The installation 'Les veuves de Noirmoutier' (or 'The Widows of Noirmoutier') had various women filmed by Varda, young and old, who spoke about their widowhood and their residence on the island of Noirmoutier. The film is a montage of these meetings, which are both simple and melancholic.

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In this 2006 program by Agnès Varda, her daughter, Rosalie Varda, reunites Claire Drouot and Marie-France Boyer to discuss their roles in the controversial film 'La bonheur' forty-one years earlier.

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In 2006, director Agnès Varda followed Jean-Claude Drouot, who plays François in 'Le bonheur', as he returned to the movie's setting of Fontenay-aux-Roses and retraced his steps. He also reconnects with local residents, some of whom were featured in the film.

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Agnès Varda and her crew stroll through the streets of Fontenay-aux-Roses asking a number of the town's residents what happiness means to them.

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Four intellectuals from various professions and backgrounds discuss their thoughts on Agnès Varda's 'Le bonheur' as a film and their thoughts on happiness as a concept.

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Director Agnès Varda looks at definitions of happiness put forth by great writers.

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A super short film to accompany the earlier documentary of the same name. A photoplay of various caryatids to be found in Paris.

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Daguerréotypes filmmaker Agnès Varda shot this footage of an outdoor concert in Paris’s 14th arrondissement in 2005.

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More than 40 years after making "Cléo de 5 à 7," Agnes Varda invites her star, two other cast members, and her assistant directors to look back. She takes us through the film, from opening scene to the end, visiting its Paris locales, placing her aged actors in the same spots, telling stories, and listening to others' reflections on the making of the film. She and they talk about making a film on a low budget, its showing at Cannes, and trying to fix a problem in the last shot. Her assistant directors discuss casting, costumes, sets, and the ways the film changed their approaches to filmmaking.

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Daguerréotypes filmmaker Agnès Varda made this short video of a daguerreotype exhibit in 2005.

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Agnes Varda revisits the storefronts and some of the local people she interviewed 30 years earlier in Daguerréotypes (1976).

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This short profile of Agnès Varda’s longtime bakery and accordion shop was shot by the filmmaker in 2005.

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She is said to be cold, secretive and mysterious. She has the reputation of not letting anything of her intimate thoughts, her private life, her joys as well as her torments show through. She managed to protect her family, her loves, her choices from the curiosity of magazines and her public. A tour de force for a sixty year long career with more than one hundred and thirty films shot with the greatest filmmakers in the world. However, the raw material for a very personal account of Catherine Deneuve exists: it can be found in the interviews given by the actress from her beginnings until today. They allow us to discover another Catherine Deneuve.

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"Il mondo a scatti" is a film that intertwines images of today and yesterday, still images and moving images through a dialogue between two people who reflect on the visible and invisible things of the world: Cecilia Mangini, unstoppable ninety years old, photographer, documentary maker, screenwriter is filmed by Paolo Pisanelli, photographer, director, curator of cultural events.

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Paris, Rue Beautreillis, July 3, 1971. The corpse of rock star Jim Morrison is found in a bathtub, in the apartment of his girlfriend Pamela Courson. The chronicle of the last months of the life of the poet, singer and charismatic leader of the American band The Doors, one of the most influential in the history of rock.

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A Woman Watches People.

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Actor Jane Birkin talks about her friendship with director Agnes Varda, and about their work on 'Jane B. Par Agnes V.' and Kung-Fu Master!'.

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A desktop documentary about the online afterlife of the late French filmmaker, Chris Marker.

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In the hills of Los Angeles the reclusive, stylish and enigmatic 96-year-old Harumi Taniguchi spent decades painting, writing poetry and dancing in her home designed by architect Richard Neutra.

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An unpredictable documentary from a fascinating storyteller, Agnès Varda’s last film sheds light on her experience as a director, bringing a personal insight to what she calls "cine-writing," traveling from Rue Daguerre in Paris to Los Angeles and Beijing.

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An unpredictable documentary from a fascinating storyteller, Agnès Varda’s last film sheds light on her experience as a director, bringing a personal insight to what she calls “cine-writing,” traveling from Rue Daguerre in Paris to Los Angeles and Beijing.

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This documentary recounts the life of the late composer Michel Legrand, known for his works on Les Parapluies de Cherbourg or Les Demoiselles De Rochefort with the famous director Jacques Demy.

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The epic life story of Alice Guy-Blaché (1873–1968), a French screenwriter, director and producer, true pioneer of cinema, the first person who made a narrative fiction film; author of hundreds of movies, but banished from history books. Ignored and forgotten. At last remembered.

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QUINQUI STARS begins in the years of the transformations that took place between the 70s and the 80s in the peripheral neighborhoods of Madrid that affected many young people and drove them towards delinquency.

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At 35 years old, photographer JR is a street art worldwide star. Discovered after the Paris’ suburb riots of 2005 for his portraits of young people, his collages have adorned the galleries of the Louvre, the Pompidou Center, the Pantheon, the National Assembly ever since … From New York to Shanghai, and the Israeli-Palestinian wall to the US-Mexico border, he has stuck or exhibited giant photos on the walls of dozens of countries and associated hundreds of thousands of unknown artists with his projects. With the active collaboration of the artist himself, the documentary “# JR” tells the extraordinary adventure of this art activist whose spectacular interventions are all clear expressions of humanism, pacifism or remembrance relayed by his very strong involvement in social networks. For JR, art can help change the world.

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An artistic pioneer, Agnès Varda has never stopped looking for the next way to tell a story. Here the 90-year-old explains how Instagram, with a majority of users in the 18-24 age range, followed photography and film as her medium of choice.

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An interview with Agnes Varda and JR.

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Agnès Varda shares her career and life story on the eve of receiving her Honorary Oscar in 2017: from her childhood and early influences to her life with Jacques Demy, and of course a lifetime of images, her unique artistic journey as a photographer, filmmaker and visual artist.

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Director Agnès Varda and photographer/muralist JR journey through rural France and form an unlikely friendship.

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Knokke, Belgium. A small mundane coastal town, home to the beau-monde. To compete with Venice and Cannes, the posh casino hosts the second ‘World Festival of Film and the Arts’ in 1949, organised in part by the Royal Cinematheque of Belgium. To celebrate cinema’s 50 year existence, they put together a side program showcasing the medium in all its shapes and forms: surrealist film, absolute film, dadaist films, abstract film,… The side program would soon become a festival in its own right: ‘EXPRMNTL’, dedicated to experimental cinema, and would become a mythical gathering of the avant-garde…

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This documentary cracks open the meticulously constructed façade of Andy Warhol, exposing the complex figure behind the soup cans and Marilyns. Director Tania Goldenberg traces the transformation of Andrew Warhola, a shy, churchgoing son of Pittsburgh immigrants, into the silver-wigged icon who redefined modern celebrity while deliberately maintaining a lifelong mask. Behind the iconic person...

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Isabell Suba, ambitious up-and-coming director, has made it – one of her short films is in the line-up of the most important film festival of the world! When she arrives at the 65. Cannes film festival, she has face the accomplished facts: David, her incompetent producer, has kindly sublet their cosy joint apartment to other festival guests. The other bad news: There is not a single movie in the competition directed by a woman! This affirms Isabell’s qualms: The film business demands women to gear up instead of dressing up low cut! Moreover, the chauvinistic remarks of her comrade-in-arms David who feels comfortable around the clichéd gender stereotypes from the Stone Age seemingly prevalent in Cannes infuriate Isabell. As if this wasn’t enough already, a shattering feedback on her new film project by a potential investor finally causes her to doubt herself. Before she can live her dream up at the Olympus of film business, she must first find out who really believes in her.

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Thirteen filmmakers share personal reflections on Henri Langlois—the visionary founder of the Cinémathèque Française—recounting his influence on their lives, his role in preserving film history, and his enduring impact on world cinema.

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On the 8th floor of the Fondation Cartier in Paris, Raymond Depardon's film features a minute of silence with eight artists and scientists: David Lynch, Patti Smith, William Eggleston, Takeshi Kitano, Ron Mueck, Jean Michel Alberola, Agnès Varda and Misha Gromov.

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Is there such a thing as strictly feminine cinema? Is it more difficult for a woman than for a man to direct a film? Is gender parity necessary in the industry? Actress and producer Julie GAYET and actor and director Mathieu BUSSON ask these questions to twenty French woman filmmakers, who face a camera together for the first time. After over an hour of lively, informal, spontaneous and funny interviews, it becomes obvious that these issues are still problematic and definitely worthy of a documentary. As Mia HANSEN-LØVE remarks, “In the eyes of the people, a woman’s film is always a woman’s film, while a man’s movie is simply… a movie”.

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The 3 lives of Agnès Varda: photographer, filmmaker and visual artist.

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This profile of street artists Jérôme Mesnager and Miss Tic was shot by director Agnès Varda in Paris between 2006 and 2012.

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Agnès Varda takes us on a journey of discovery as she travels the globe—from Stockholm to St. Petersburg, Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City to Los Angeles—meeting with friends, artists, and fellow filmmakers.

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Two friends (and legendary French New Wave filmmakers) meet in real and virtual worlds.

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A real estate agent from Paris arrives in Los Angeles to settle his late mother's estate, but a found photograph sends him on an impromptu journey to Mexico to find a woman named Lola.

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Filmmaking icon Agnès Varda, the award-winning director regarded by many as the grandmother of the French new wave, turns the camera on herself with this unique autobiographical documentary. Composed of film excerpts and elaborate dramatic re-creations, Varda's self-portrait recounts the highs and lows of her professional career, the many friendships that affected her life and her longtime marriage to cinematic giant Jacques Demy.

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A documentary film directed by French Agnès Varda as an extension of the exhibition 'L'île et elle'. The installation 'Les veuves de Noirmoutier' (or 'The Widows of Noirmoutier') had various women filmed by Varda, young and old, who spoke about their widowhood and their residence on the island of Noirmoutier. The film is a montage of these meetings, which are both simple and melancholic.

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A super short film to accompany the earlier documentary of the same name. A photoplay of various caryatids to be found in Paris.

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Agnes Varda revisits the storefronts and some of the local people she interviewed 30 years earlier in Daguerréotypes (1976).

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An adventure of three characters: Clarisse, a psychic’s apprentice, Lazare, who works at the Parisian catacombs, and the bronze statue of a lion at the Denfert-Rochereau (in the 14th arrondissement). Clarisse and Laraze meet daily, but one day Lazare disappears and the lion disappears as well!

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18 years after the making of the film "Vagabond", director Agnès Varda created this documentary which includes interviews with the cast.

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Agnès Varda’s follow-up to her acclaimed documentary THE GLEANERS AND I takes us deeper into the world of those who find purpose and beauty in the refuse of society, revisiting many of the original film’s subjects.

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A short tribute to Zgougou, Varda’s cat who was given to her by Sabine Mamou.

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Varda focuses her eye on gleaners: those who scour already-reaped fields for the odd potato or turnip. Her investigation leads from forgotten corners of the French countryside to off-hours at the green markets of Paris, following those who insist on finding a use for that which society has cast off, whether out of necessity or activism.

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Monsieur Cinema, a hundred years old, lives alone in a large villa. His memories fade away, so he engages a young woman to tell him stories about all the movies ever made.

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Agnes Varda's documentary of the celebrations arising from the 25th anniversary of her husband Jacques Demy's film The Young Girls of Rochefort.

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Jacquot Demy, the son of a garage owner and a hairdresser, is fascinated by cinema and decides to pursue his dream of becoming a filmmaker by any means necessary.

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A lonely 40-year old woman finds herself shattering taboos by falling in love with the 14-year old Julien – but is it romance, or a desperate attempt to turn back time in the face of middle age?

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The interests, obsessions, and fantasies of two singular artists converge in this inspired collaboration between Agnès Varda and her longtime friend Jane Birkin. Made over the course of a year and motivated by Birkin’s fourtieth birthday—a milestone she admits to have some anxiety over—Jane B. by Agnès V. contrasts the private, reflective Birkin with Birkin the icon.

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At the sea shore, a goat, a child, and a naked man. This is a photograph taken in 1954 by Agnès Varda. The goat was dead, the child was named Ulysses, and the man was naked. Starting from this frozen image, the film explores the real and the imaginary.

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Mona Bergeron is dead, her frozen body found in a ditch in the French countryside. From this, the film flashes back to the weeks leading up to her death. Through these flashbacks, Mona gradually declines as she travels from place to place, taking odd jobs and staying with whomever will offer her a place to sleep. Mona is fiercely independent, craving freedom over comfort, but it is this desire to be free that will eventually lead to her demise.

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Commissioned by French television, this is a short documentary on the neo-classical statues found throughout Paris, predominantly on the walls of buildings, holding up windows, roofs etc.

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An unusual visit to a large, empty apartment. But is it empty or not? Maybe a family has lived there or is going to live there. Maybe a young girl is going to escape from there. Maybe some of the old-timers who lived there never left. The walls themselves tell the stories of the time passing by.

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After separating from the father of her son, a young French woman tries to find lodging and a fresh start in L.A. for herself and her son.

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Venturing from Venice Beach to Watts, Varda looks at the murals of LA as backdrop to and mirror of the city’s many cultures. She casts a curious eye on graffiti and photorealism, roller disco & gang violence, evangelical Christians, Hare Krishnas, artists, angels and ordinary Angelenos.

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Oscar François de Jarjayes was born female, but her father insisted she be raised as a boy as he had no sons. She becomes the captain of the guards at Versailles under King Louis XVI and Marie Antonette. Her privileged, noble life comes under fire as she discovers the hard life of the poor people of France. She is caught up in the French Revolution, and must choose between her loyalty and love.

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An intimate portrait of the small shops and shopkeepers of the Rue Daguerre in Paris, a picturesque street that has been the filmmaker’s home for more than 50 years.

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The intertwined lives of two women in 1970s France, set against the progress of the women's movement in which Agnes Varda was involved. Pomme and Suzanne meet when Pomme helps Suzanne obtain an abortion after a third pregnancy which she cannot afford. They lose contact but meet again ten years later. Pomme has become an unconventional singer, Suzanne a serious community worker - despite the contrast they remain friends and share in the various dramas of each others' lives, in the process affirming their different female identities.

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An Iranian man and a French woman stroll around the city of Isfahan, Iran and find that their love is mirrored perfectly in the architecture and mosaics of the city's mosques.

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What does being a woman really mean? How do women live the status society reserves for them? A group of women, beautiful or not, young or not, gifted with motherly instinct or not, answer before Agnès Varda's camera.

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A girl, whose father is from Greece, studies ancient art in France. The film was made for television but never broadcast for political reasons related to its portrayal of Greeks. A work print was screened in Belgium in 1971, and the film is now available in reconstructed form.

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Three actors in Hollywood live and love together. A director comes from New York to make a movie about actors and Hollywood.

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A film shot during the summer of 1968 in Oakland, California around the meetings organised by the Black Panthers Party to free Huey Newton, one of their leaders, and to turn his trial into a political debate. They tried and succeeded in catching America’s attention.

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While in San Francisco for the promotion of her last film in October 1967, Agnès Varda, tipped by her friend Tom Luddy, gets to know a relative she had never heard of before, Jean Varda, nicknamed "Yanco". This hitherto unknown uncle lives on a boat in Sausalito, is a painter, has adopted a hippie lifestyle and loves life. The meeting is a very happy one.

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Images and poems of the celebrated couple Louis Aragon and Elsa Triolet. Elsa’s youth as recalled by Aragon, with commentary by Elsa.

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