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Agnès Varda
Director / Screenwriter / Editor
1928 - 
Born May 30, Brussels, Belgium
Key Production Country: France 
Key Genres: Drama, Documentary, Essay Film
Key Collaborators: Joanna Bruzdowicz (Composer), Marie-Jo Audiard (Editor), Bodan Litnanski (Leading Player), Frances Wertheimer (Leading Character Player), Michel Legrand (Composer/Leading Character Player), Stephane Krausz (Cinematographer), Mathieu Demy (Leading Character Player), Jean Rabier (Cinematographer), Janine Verneau (Editor)

Highly Recommended: Le Bonheur (1965), The Beaches of Agnès (2008)
Recommended: Cléo from 5 to 7 (1961)*, Vagabond (1985)*, Jacquot de Nantes (1991), The Gleaners & I (2000)*^
Worth a Look: La Pointe Courte (1954), Du côté de la côte (1958), Ulysse (1982), Kung-fu Master! (1987)**, The World of Jacques Demy (1995), The Gleaners & I: Two Years Later (2002)
* Listed in TSPDT's 1,000 Greatest Films section; ^ Listed in TSPDT's 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films section; ** Listed in TSPDT's Ain't Nobody's Blues But My Own section.

 
 
 
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Books: [ Agnès Varda (French Film Directors) ]
  
Cleo from 5 to 7 (1961)Le Bonheur (1965)Vagabond (1985)The Beaches of Agnès (2008)
 
     
  "Agnès Varda has been dubbed the grandmother of the nouvelle vague. Her 1954 debut , La pointe courte, was an iconoclastic synthesis of ragged documentary and Bergmanesque fiction that ran counter to the French tradition of quality cinema, controversially using nonprofessional actors and real locations (as opposed to studio sets)... She essayed a series of documentaries before Cléo from 5 to 7 (1961). Along with Le bonheur (1965), a visually sensuous exploration of  a love triangle, it cemented Varda's reputation as one of the most important women directors in the history of cinema." - Lloyd Hughes (The Rough Guide to Film, 2007)  
     
  "Agnès Varda is a major force in the French New Wave who happily has remained true to her vision as an independent and uncompromising artist, has readily adapted to technological change in the cinema, and is still active today as a digital filmmaker with a wide audience... Varda is as up to date and modern as many of her younger colleagues, and the grandmother of the New Wave continues to inspire a new generation of filmmakers." - Wheeler Winston Dixon (501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers, 2007)  
     
  "Agnès Varda used the skills she honed early in her career as a photographer to create some of the most nuanced, thought-provoking films of the past fifty years. She is widely believed to have presaged the French new wave with her first film, La Pointe Courte, long before creating one of the movement’s benchmarks, Cléo from 5 to 7. Later, with Le bonheur and Vagabond, Varda further shook up art-house audiences, challenging bourgeois codes with her inscrutable characters and offering effortlessly beautiful compositions and editing. Now working largely as a documentarian, Varda remains one of the essential cinematic poets of our time and a true visionary." - The Criterion Collection  
     
  "You know, the boundaries between contemporary art and cinema are so rigid. It's unbelievable. The film critics don't know my artwork and the art world doesn't know my films." - Agnès Varda  
     
 
Please note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director that we haven't seen include Diary of a Pregnant Woman (1958), Fiances du pont mac Donald ou (1961), Salut les cubains (1963), Elsa la rose (1965), Les Creatures (1966), Uncle Yanco (1967), Black Panthers (1968), Lions Love (1969), Women Reply: Our Bodies, Our Sex (1975), Daguerreotypes (1976), Plaisir d'amour en Iran (1976), One Sings, the Other Doesn't (1977), Documenteur (1981), Mur Murs (1981), 7p., cuis., s. de b., ... a saisir (1984), The So-Called Caryatids (1984), T'as de beaux escaliers tu sais (1986), Jane B. by Afnes V. (1988), Les Demoiselles ont eu 25 ans (1993), One Hundred and One Nights (1995), The Vanishing Lion (2003), Ydessa, the Bears and etc. (2004) and Quelques veuves de noirmoutier (2006).
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"Agnès Varda’s startlingly individualistic films have earned her the title ‘‘grandmother of the New Wave’’ of French filmmaking. Her statement that a filmmaker must exercise as much freedom as a novelist became a mandate for New Wave directors, especially Chris Marker and Alain Resnais. Varda’s first film, La Pointe courte, edited by Resnais, is regarded, as Georges Sadoul affirms, as "the first film of the French nouvelle vague. Its interplay between conscience, emotions, and the real world make it a direct antecedent of Hiroshima, mon amour"... Varda’s reputation as a filmmaker dazzles and endures." - Louise Heck-Rabi (updated by Rob Edelman), International Dictionary of Film and Filmmakers

 
 
Top 250 Directors
100 Essential Directors (Pop Matters)
501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers
 
See Also
Chantal Akerman
Catherine Breillat
Robert Bresson
Jacques Demy
Marguerite Duras (external link)
Philippe Garrel
Jean-Luc Godard
Diane Kurys (external link)
Chris Marker
Alain Resnais
Jacques Rivette
Eric Rohmer
 
 
 
         
         

 

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