Agnès Varda: An Irresistible Force
December 20, 2019–February 28, 2020
Vive la Varda! We pay tribute to a founding mother of the French New Wave, who died at age ninety in 2019—an inspiring and vital artist to the end.
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The Beaches of Agnès
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Le bonheur
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Vagabond
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Black Panthers
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Cléo from 5 to 7
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Varda by Agnès
- Upcoming
Films - Past
Films - Past
Events
Past Films
Varda by Agnès
Agnès Varda, Didier Rouget
France, 2019East Bay Advance Screenings
Friday, December 20 7 PMView DetailsIn the last of her prodigious life’s work, the legendary, delightfully irreverent Agnès Varda conducts a personal career retrospective as only she can, with skill, charm, wit, reverie, and wonder. “A master class on filmmaking” (Toronto Star).
Varda by Agnès
Agnès Varda, Didier Rouget
France, 2019East Bay Advance Screenings
Saturday, December 21 1:30 PMView DetailsIn the last of her prodigious life’s work, the legendary, delightfully irreverent Agnès Varda conducts a personal career retrospective as only she can, with skill, charm, wit, reverie, and wonder. “A master class on filmmaking” (Toronto Star).
Varda by Agnès
Agnès Varda, Didier Rouget
France, 2019East Bay Advance Screenings
Thursday, December 26 7 PMView DetailsIn the last of her prodigious life’s work, the legendary, delightfully irreverent Agnès Varda conducts a personal career retrospective as only she can, with skill, charm, wit, reverie, and wonder. “A master class on filmmaking” (Toronto Star).
The Gleaners and I
Agnès Varda
France, 2000Digital Restoration
Film to Table dinner follows the December 28 screeningSaturday, December 28 5 PMView DetailsVarda’s rumination on the art of “living off the leftovers of others” visits food scavengers and cultural rebels, and finds inspiration in both past and present, rural and urban, the political and the highly personal. “Beautiful, absorbing, and touching” (Jonathan Rosenbaum).
Vagabond
Agnès Varda
France, 1985Digital Restoration
Sunday, December 29 4:30 PMView DetailsThe short life and eventual death of a young female drifter forms the basis of Varda’s chilling look at alienation and idealism. “Like so many of the greatest films, it tells us a very specific story, strong and unadorned, about a very particular person” (Roger Ebert).
La Pointe Courte
Agnès Varda
France, 1955BAMPFA Collection
Thursday, January 9 7 PMView DetailsMade outside the French film industry on a shoestring budget, Varda’s debut film about two reunited lovers in a Mediterranean fishing port has been called “truly the first film of the nouvelle vague.”
Cléo from 5 to 7
Agnès Varda
France, 1962Digital Restoration
BAMPFA Student Committee PickSaturday, January 11 6 PMView DetailsShot entirely on location in the streets of Paris, Cléo chronicles two hours of a pop singer’s life. A score by Michel Legrand and cameos by Legrand, Jean-Luc Godard, and Anna Karina flavor this New Wave classic that proves Varda’s theme, “one isn’t born a woman, one becomes one.”
Faces Places
Agnès Varda, JR
France, 2017BAMPFA Student Committee Pick
Friday, January 17 7 PMView DetailsVarda teams up with hipster artist JR on a road trip across rural France, meeting the locals and creating large-scale portraits. One of Varda’s last films, and a first-rate achievement in her brilliant career.
Le bonheur
Agnès Varda
France, 1965Saturday, January 18 4 PMView DetailsVarda’s strikingly colorful, lyrical film examines a love triangle within a circular structure, as a carpenter seeks happiness with both his wife and his mistress. “Varda fills her frames with riots of nature and color” (Richard Brody).
In Focus: Shorts by Agnès Varda, Program 1: Play and Politics
This program also screens Saturday, February 8 (without lecture).
Wednesday, January 22 3:10 PMLecture by Tom LuddyView DetailsThese short films made in the sixties are both political and playful, in keeping with the times. Salut les cubains screens along with two works made in the Bay Area, Uncle Yanco (on Varda’s artist uncle) and Black Panthers (featuring Huey Newton and Kathleen Cleaver).
Varda by Agnès
Agnès Varda, Didier Rouget
France, 2019East Bay Advance Screenings
Friday, January 24 4 PMView DetailsIn the last of her prodigious life’s work, the legendary, delightfully irreverent Agnès Varda conducts a personal career retrospective as only she can, with skill, charm, wit, reverie, and wonder. “A master class on filmmaking” (Toronto Star).
Shorts by Agnès Varda, Program 2: Places and Faces
Sunday, January 26 1:30 PMView DetailsThis collection of short works finds Varda observing people, spaces, and places from France to Iran, in L’opéra-Mouffe, Du côté de la côte, La réponse de femmes, Plaisir d’amour en Iran, Ulysse, and Les dites cariatides.
Vagabond
Agnès Varda
France, 1985Digital Restoration
Thursday, January 30 7 PMView DetailsThe short life and eventual death of a young female drifter forms the basis of Varda’s chilling look at alienation and idealism. “Like so many of the greatest films, it tells us a very specific story, strong and unadorned, about a very particular person” (Roger Ebert).
Faces Places
Agnès Varda, JR
France, 2017BAMPFA Student Committee Pick
Friday, January 31 5 PMView DetailsVarda teams up with hipster artist JR on a road trip across rural France, meeting the locals and creating large-scale portraits. One of Varda’s last films, and a first-rate achievement in her brilliant career.
La Pointe Courte
Agnès Varda
France, 1955BAMPFA Collection
Saturday, February 1 3 PMView DetailsMade outside the French film industry on a shoestring budget, Varda’s debut film about two reunited lovers in a Mediterranean fishing port has been called “truly the first film of the nouvelle vague.”
Daguerréotypes
Agnès Varda
France, 1975Digital Restoration
Sunday, February 2 5 PMView DetailsVarda’s playful and affectionate portrait of her own thoroughly Parisian neighborhood and the shopkeepers who keep it thriving. “Casual anthropology with a strongly humanist bent” (Slant).
Cléo from 5 to 7
Agnès Varda
France, 1962Digital Restoration
BAMPFA Student Committee PickFriday, February 7 5 PMView DetailsShot entirely on location in the streets of Paris, Cléo chronicles two hours of a pop singer’s life. A score by Michel Legrand and cameos by Legrand, Jean-Luc Godard, and Anna Karina flavor this New Wave classic that proves Varda’s theme, “one isn’t born a woman, one becomes one.”
Shorts by Agnès Varda, Program 1: Play and Politics
This program also screens Wednesday, January 22, with a lecture by Tom Luddy.
Saturday, February 8 5 PMView DetailsThese short films made in the sixties are both political and playful, in keeping with the times. Salut les cubains screens along with two works made in the Bay Area, Uncle Yanco (on Varda’s artist uncle) and Black Panthers (featuring Huey Newton and Kathleen Cleaver).
Le bonheur
Agnès Varda
France, 1965Friday, February 14 5 PMView DetailsVarda’s strikingly colorful, lyrical film examines a love triangle within a circular structure, as a carpenter seeks happiness with both his wife and his mistress. “Varda fills her frames with riots of nature and color” (Richard Brody).
The Young Girls of Rochefort
Jacques Demy
France, 1967Digital Restoration
Recommended for ages 12 & upSaturday, February 15 1 PMView DetailsCatherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac play twins lifted out of their small-town reveries by a troupe of wandering entertainers, including Gene Kelly. This musical by Varda’s husband, Jacques Demy, is “not merely charming or amusing, but profoundly moving” (Sight & Sound).
The Young Girls Turn 25
Agnès Varda
France, 1993Digital Restoration
Saturday, February 15 3:30 PMView DetailsVarda’s splendid documentary revisits the town of Rochefort on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the shooting of The Young Girls of Rochefort, and finds evidence of the film’s lasting effects on the townspeople.
Mur murs
Agnès Varda
United States, France, 1980Digital Restoration
Sunday, February 16 5 PMView DetailsVarda’s documentary looks at the murals of Los Angeles as backdrop to and mirror of the city’s many cultures circa 1980.
Lions Love (. . . and Lies)
Agnès Varda
United States, 1969Digital Restoration
Thursday, February 20 7 PMView DetailsVarda’s experimental feature, shot in Hollywood in 1968 and starring Warhol superstar Viva, is a deliberately decadent riff on fantasy, immaturity, and violence. “More than a time capsule of events and moods—it’s a living aesthetic model for revolutionary times” (Richard Brody).
The Gleaners and I
Agnès Varda
France, 2000Digital Restoration
Film to Table dinner follows the December 28 screeningFriday, February 21 7 PMView DetailsVarda’s rumination on the art of “living off the leftovers of others” visits food scavengers and cultural rebels, and finds inspiration in both past and present, rural and urban, the political and the highly personal. “Beautiful, absorbing, and touching” (Jonathan Rosenbaum).
Jacquot
Agnès Varda
France, 1991Digital Restoration
Recommended for ages 12 & upSaturday, February 22 3 PMView DetailsInspired by the memories of her husband, director Jacques Demy, Varda crafted this affecting and enlightening portrait of the artist as a young boy in 1940s Nantes. “A one-of-a-kind celebration” (New York Times).
One Sings, the Other Doesn’t
Agnès Varda
France, Belgium, Venezuela, 1977Digital Restoration
Sunday, February 23 4:30 PMView DetailsTwo very different women search for their place in the world over the course of a decade in Varda’s look at friendship and feminism. “Remains almost unique as a commercial French film concerned with the militant aspects of the women’s movement” (Alison Smith).
The Beaches of Agnès
Agnès Varda
France, 2008Digital Restoration
Friday, February 28 7 PMView DetailsVarda takes a cinematic stroll through her long career—and the history of French film—in this first-person documentary. “For all its melancholy and its profound awareness of mortality, [it is] one of the jolliest, more life-affirming self-portraits in recent cinema” (Sight & Sound).