Mur Murs

Agnès Varda, United States, France, 1980

Venturing from Venice Beach to Watts, Varda looks at the murals of Los Angeles as backdrop to and mirror of the city’s many cultures circa 1980. She casts a curious eye on graffiti and photorealism, roller disco and gang violence, evangelical Christians, Hare Krishnas, artists, angels, and ordinary Angelenos. Along the meandering way, we meet the creators of some of California’s most memorable wall art, including Judy Baca, mastermind of the Great Wall of Los Angeles project along the Los Angeles River; Arno Jordan, painter of the ironically bucolic scenes adorning the Farmer John meatpacking plant; and Kent Twitchell, who offers a theological rationale for a depiction of the Holy Trinity starring actors from Lassie, The Lone Ranger, and Father Knows Best. The film is very Varda and very LA: vibrating with color and surprising juxtapositions, rich in illusion and allusion. And like the movies, the murals are both monumental and ephemeral, destined to fade, many of them now gone.

Juliet Clark

Documenteur

Agnès Varda, United States, France, 1981

FEATURING
Sabine Mamou
Mathieu Demy
Lisa Blok
Tina Odom

Conceived as a shadow film to Agnès Varda’s upbeat Mur Murs (on Los Angeles’s murals), Documenteur stars Varda’s editor, Sabine Mamou, as a French woman “suffering from exile” while living in Los Angeles with her young son (played by Mathieu Demy, Varda and Jacques Demy’s son). Varda described it as “a film that exists between image and sound . . . meant to leave room to add our own feelings to the film, to complete its emotional load.” Varda felt this work was central in her filmography—a work that was very close to reality, very autobiographical, and the only film where she really lets go and allows herself and the film to get lost in emotion. “Her masterpiece” (Pierre-Henri Gibert).