Agnès Varda, sitting on the stage of a theater, breaks down the most important moments of his career as a filmmaker, making an introspection of the processes that the film takes to make memorable films such as "Homeless and lawless" (1985). "Varda by Agnès" is the latest production by the pioneer of the French New Wave, a non-fiction feature film made a few months before her death: an involuntary farewell letter.
In 1994, with a retro at the French Cinémathèque, I published a book entitled VARDA BY AGNÈS. 25 years later, the same title is given to my film made of moving images and words, with the same project: give keys about my body of work. I give my own keys, my thoughts, nothing pretentious, just keys.
The film is in two parts, two centuries.
The 20th century from my first feature film LA POINTE COURTE in 1954 to the last one in 1996, ONE HUNDRED AND ONE NIGHTS. In between, I made documentaries, features, short and long.
The second part starts in the 21st century, when the small digital cameras changed my approach to documentaries, from the GLEANERS AND I in 2000 to FACES PLACES, co-directed with JR in 2017. But during that time, I mostly created art installations, atypical triptychs, shacks of cinema and I kept making documentaries, such as THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS.
In the middle of the two parts, there is a little reminder about my first life as a photographer.
I’ve made a wide variety of films in my life. So I need to tell you what led me to do this work for so many years.
Three words are important to me: Inspiration, creation, sharing.
INSPIRATION is why you make a film. The motivations, ideas, circumstances and happenstance that spark a desire and you set to work to make a film.
CREATION is how you make the film. What means do you use? What structure? Alone or not alone? In colour or not in colour? Creation is a job.
The third word is SHARING. You don’t make films to watch them alone, you make films to show them. An empty cinema: a filmmaker’s nightmare!
People are at the heart of my work. Real people. That’s how I’ve always referred to the people I film in cities or the countryside.
When you film something, a place, a landscape, a group of people, even if the subject is specific, what you shot indicates your deepest project.
I like to bring together reality and its representation. But I also like to juxtapose moving images and still images, in video and in photography.
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