The Cinémathèque française is hosting a major exhibition on the work and career of the filmmaker, photographer and visual artist, who died in 2019 and obtained recognition a little late in life.
This beautiful exhibition looks a bit like his film, The Beaches of Agnès, released in 2008: fantasy, emotion, memories, and all the people, known or not, who mattered to her. Two great films by Agnès Varda, the best perhaps, Cleo from 5 to 7 And Without you or law welcome us at the start of the journey.
And we are quickly struck by this start to her career that many may have forgotten, when she was a photographer. Many photos of her, but also of her taken by others, surround us.
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Florence Tissot, curator, designed the event with the children of Agnès Varda, Rosalie Varda and Matthieu Demy: “It was important to promote her as a photographer but not only as a professional photographer, that of Jean Vilar and the beginnings of the Avignon Festival, or her experience as a great reporter, but also as an artist photographer. So there is a whole room which also presents her compositions, which she was able to create in the 1950s, and which demonstrate a truly remarkable eye and imagination.”
Artist and free woman
And like her characters ultimately, those of Cléo and Mona (Sandrine Bonnaire in No shelter, no law) Agnès Varda will have led her career and her life as an artist and a free, strong and independent woman. By also knowing how to emerge from the shadows that could have been represented by his companion, the director Jacques Demy. It is therefore quite natural that one of the five thematic spaces of the exhibition evokes feminism.
“Films which at the same time renew the cinematographic language” Florence Tissot tells us, “and are also very innovative in the way they look at women. Who are not reduced to the role of muse, object of desire or foil for male characters. It is important to look at his work through this prism to fully understand its modernity.”
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Towards the end of the tour, in a window appear five of the most prestigious cinema awards received by Agnès Varda: a Golden Lion in Venice, a Silver Bear in Berlin, but also an Oscar, a César and a Palme d’Or. Honorary Gold, all three won towards the end of his life and career. Witnesses of a recognition finally acquired, even if perhaps a little late.
(And for those who would like to immerse themselves in her work, or offer a nice Varda gift for the holidays, a large box set bringing together her short and feature films on a total of 24 DVDs has just been released commercially.)
Exhibition Viva Varda! French Cinematheque, Paris, until May
The Agnès Varda exhibition at the Cinémathèque – Report by Matteu Maestracci