Varda combines three separate films into one thought-provoking, charming essay on photography, memory, and the artistic process. In Ydessa, the Bears and Etc . . ., Varda visits an art curator who displays only photographs of people holding teddy bears, thereby creating a world where seemingly everyone is-at least for a moment-happy and loved. For Ulysse, Varda interviews the subjects of a photograph she took nearly three decades earlier. Now, neither of the people depicted can remember being photographed. The final short, Salut les cubains, narrated by Michel Piccoli, echoes with faded memories and lost time. A collection of photographs Varda took on her 1963 visit to Cuba, it reveals individuals alive with hope for the future, a future that now, as we watch the film forty years later, is far behind them. “I became fascinated by the inert photo that comes to life when we look at it,” Varda wrote; spanning a lifetime of reflections on how art affects our lives, and vice versa, Cinévardaphoto spins the personal into the political and individual musings into universal wonders.