This interview was originally published in Fireflies #5. Many thanks to the author and the publication for allowing us to run it online.By going to Paris to interview Agnès Varda I lived two dreams shared by many a cinephile: I met and spent a couple of hours with the filmmaking legend, and I visited a place that ranks high amongst cinema’s most fabled locations: the house at 86-88 rue Daguerre. Walking over from the métro, it was difficult to get my bearings based on Varda’s 1976 documentary Daguerréotypes. In lieu of the film’s charmingly scruffy artisanal shops and family-owned businesses I found snazzy boutiques, restaurants and cafés. Where the butcher used to be, there is now a yoga studio. Though hardly surprising, it was still heart-breaking to ascertain that gentrification had done away with the village-like microcosm immortalised by Varda. My disenchantment evaporated once I spotted a familiar...
- 4/8/2019
- MUBI
For the twenty-second year in a row, The Film Society of Lincoln Center and UniFrance have lined up a sparkling slate for their Rendez-Vous with French Cinema screening series, which aims to showcase “the variety and vitality of contemporary French filmmaking.” This year’s programming, including the selected films, panels, and events, includes a special focus on the myriad of ways that French culture influences the arts in America, and vice-versa.
The lineup features 23 diverse films, comprised of highlights from international festivals and works by both established favorites and talented newcomers. The series runs from March 1 – 12.
Read More: Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Exclusive Trailer: Annual Series Celebrates the Very Best in Contemporary French Cinema
Ahead, check out the 6 titles and events we are most excited to check out at this year’s screening series.
“Frantz”
Screwball comedy master Ernst Lubitsch took a rare stab at straight drama with 1932’s “Broken Lullaby,...
The lineup features 23 diverse films, comprised of highlights from international festivals and works by both established favorites and talented newcomers. The series runs from March 1 – 12.
Read More: Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Exclusive Trailer: Annual Series Celebrates the Very Best in Contemporary French Cinema
Ahead, check out the 6 titles and events we are most excited to check out at this year’s screening series.
“Frantz”
Screwball comedy master Ernst Lubitsch took a rare stab at straight drama with 1932’s “Broken Lullaby,...
- 3/1/2017
- by Chris O'Falt, David Ehrlich, Eric Kohn, Jude Dry and Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
French director is the first woman and only the fourth person to receive the honour after Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood and Bernardo Bertolucci.
Agnès Varda is to receive an honorary Palme d’or at the 68th Cannes Film Festival (May 13-24).
The French filmmaker will the first female director to be given the honour. Previously, only Woody Allen, in 2002, Clint Eastwood, in 2009, and Bernardo Bertolucci, in 2011, have been granted this distinction.
“And yet my films have never sold as much as theirs,” she said of following in their footsteps with her well-known sense of humour.
The award is given by the festival’s board of directors to renowned directors whose works have achieved a global impact but who have never won Cannes’ top prize - the Palme d’or.
Varda, 86, is a photographer, writer, actress, director and visual artist.
She studied photography and learned the ropes at the Avignon Festival, where she was...
Agnès Varda is to receive an honorary Palme d’or at the 68th Cannes Film Festival (May 13-24).
The French filmmaker will the first female director to be given the honour. Previously, only Woody Allen, in 2002, Clint Eastwood, in 2009, and Bernardo Bertolucci, in 2011, have been granted this distinction.
“And yet my films have never sold as much as theirs,” she said of following in their footsteps with her well-known sense of humour.
The award is given by the festival’s board of directors to renowned directors whose works have achieved a global impact but who have never won Cannes’ top prize - the Palme d’or.
Varda, 86, is a photographer, writer, actress, director and visual artist.
She studied photography and learned the ropes at the Avignon Festival, where she was...
- 5/9/2015
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
Originally shot in the mid-’70s, Agnès Varda’s vérité documentary Daguerréotypes has aged splendidly, acquiring flavors that would’ve been inconceivable at the time it was made. Back then, Varda hauled her camera around her Paris neighborhood on the Rue Daguerre, intending to capture what went on in the little shops in what was at the time one of the city’s most bustling commercial districts. As Varda explains early on in her voiceover narration, she wasn’t looking for esoterica. She filmed butchers, bakers, tailors, grocers, hairstylists, driving-school instructors… people she saw every day. And ...
- 12/15/2011
- avclub.com
"In a career that began nearly 60 years ago, Agnès Varda has shown an extraordinary gift for capturing the theatricality of the mundane, particularly in her documentaries," writes Melissa Anderson in the Voice. "Daguerréotypes, filmed in 1975 but only now receiving a New York run, affectionately chronicles the shopkeepers within 50 yards of her home, at 88 rue Daguerre in Paris's 14th arrondissement."
"Daguerréotypes has a cute pun for a title," notes Jesse Cataldo in Slant, "and the results at first seem predictably twee: little portraits of shopkeepers at work, ensconced in charming, specialized stores along a quiet street, their foibles tagged and collected. But like many of Varda's similarly themed explorations, the results are more than they initially seem, casual anthropology with a strongly humanist bent, resulting in a film that's fueled more by compassion than curiosity. It's this compassion that elevates the film, assuring that Varda's storybook portraiture never feels pat or manipulative,...
"Daguerréotypes has a cute pun for a title," notes Jesse Cataldo in Slant, "and the results at first seem predictably twee: little portraits of shopkeepers at work, ensconced in charming, specialized stores along a quiet street, their foibles tagged and collected. But like many of Varda's similarly themed explorations, the results are more than they initially seem, casual anthropology with a strongly humanist bent, resulting in a film that's fueled more by compassion than curiosity. It's this compassion that elevates the film, assuring that Varda's storybook portraiture never feels pat or manipulative,...
- 12/12/2011
- MUBI
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