Berlinale 2019: ‘Varda by Agnes’ and Her Berlinale Camera Award
The Berlinale Camera was presented to Agnès Varda on February 13 at the Berlinale Palast. This was followed by the world premiere of Varda’s documentary ‘Varda par Agnès’ (‘Varda by Agnès’), screened out of competition in the section Competition. The laudatory speech was given by Christoph Terhechte, who headed the Berlinale’s Forum section for many years.
After the surprising and wonderful Faces, Places I expect to see Varda in a new incarnation and I was not at all disappointed. This documentary about her and by her is an catalogue raisonné of her work since her first feature La Pointe Courte, in 1954 and 1962’s Cleo from 5 to 7, which I remember so well first seeing it while I was discovering my first foreign films, to her work today which goes beyond cinema’s Faces, Places and ventures into the visual high arts with installations and exhibits as shown in the Museum of Modern Art, The Cartier Foundation, The Venice Biennale and as acquired by art collectors throughout the world.
Agnès Varda, the godmother of the New Wave and feminist icon is first shown presenting a series of lectures in which she discusses inspiration and execution to filmmakers. Even at the age of 90, she is still full of vigor.
The doc and she go well beyond that as the lectures are interspersed with clips and disgressions as she sheds light on her experience as a director, bringing a personal insight to what she calls “cine-writing,” traveling from Rue Daguerre in Paris to Los Angeles and Beijing over six decades of filmmaking up to today when she is 90 years old and still working as a deeply engaged “digital” 21st century visual artist.
Using excerpts from her work to illustrate — more associatively than chronologically — her artistic visions and ideas, her lively, anecdote-rich and clever talk is divided into two sections. Firstly, she elucidates her ‘analogue period’ from 1954 to 2000, in which the director is in the foreground. This was the young woman who set out to reinvent cinema, someone who was always open to chance and to moments of documentary, even in fiction; who, with every new film, changed her narrative style.
Appearing in the clips are her late husband Jacques Demy, Jane Birkin, Robert De Niro, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Catherine Deneuve, Alain Delon and more. Sandrine Bonnaire, the star of Varda’s multiple prize-winner Vagabond (Sans Toit Ni Loi) (1985), also speaks in a present-day interview to share her memories of making the film.
In the second part, Agnès Varda focuses on the years from 2000 to 2018 and shows how she uses digital technology to look at the world in her own, unique way.
Whether in front of the camera or behind it, Agnès Varda is a visual storyteller who eschews convention and prescribed approaches to drama. Together with some of her fellow travellers, she takes the audience on a journey through her world of unorthodox images.
Watch the press conference here.
Agnès Varda is one of the most important contemporary francophone filmmakers. She started out as a theatre photographer in Paris before shooting her first feature film, La Pointe Courte, in 1954, with no prior filmmaking experience. Through Alain Resnais, who edited the film, Varda first came into contact with the circle surrounding the Cahiers du Cinéma, who would later go on to form the core of the French Nouvelle Vague. Her fellow artists would soon include Chris Marker and Jacques Demy. In 1961 her film Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cléo from 5 to 7) premiered at Cannes and put her firmly on the radar of fans of new French cinema. 1967 saw Varda working alongside Claude Lelouch, Jean-Luc Godard and Chris Marker on the documentary Loin du Vietnam (Far from Vietnam).
To date, Varda has made numerous feature and documentary films, for which she has received multiple awards and honours, including at the major festivals in Venice, Cannes and Berlin. Her latest film, the documentary Visages, villages (Faces Places), made in collaboration with French artist JR, was nominated for the 2018 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.
Agnès Varda has been a guest of the Berlinale several times, including four times at Competition. In 1965 she was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for Le Bonheur. Her most recent visit was in 2004, when she showed her short film Le lion volatil at Berlinale Special.
Varda by Agnès
115 minutes
Written and directed by Agnès Varda
1st part co-directed by Didier Rouget
Cinematography François Décréau, Claire Duguet, Julia Fabry
Editing Agnès Varda, Nicolas Longinotti
Sound David Chaulier, Alan Savary
Assistant Director Julia Fabry
Production Manager Cecilia Rose
Producer Rosalie Varda
Executive Producer Rosalie Varda
Co-producers Dany Boon, Joey Faré
Co-production Arte France, Issy les Moulineaux, HBB26, Paris, Scarlett Productions, Paris
International sales by mk2.
Every year, mk2 films sells and distributes a dozen new films by established or promising directors such as Jia Zhang-Ke, Paweł Pawlikowski, Xavier Dolan, Agnès Varda, Robert Guédiguian and Stéphane Brizé. mk2 films also distributes a unique library of more than 600 films in France and around the world, including some of the major films of the history of cinema and a large number of classic films restored in HD and 2K: Charles Chaplin, François Truffaut, Jacques Demy, Abbas Kiarostami and others.
