Agnès Varda died.
A fact can be described in just nine words, but no amount of words can measure this sadness.
Varda's importance to cinema is self-evident, as she was the first wave of the New Wave of French cinema that propelled cinema aesthetics forward. But just a dozen hours ago, she had receded.
Most people know her through movies, but they are impressed by the charm of "people". Gentle, cute, open-minded, loyal to love, leftist political stance, photographer... Although she has been known as the "Godmother of the New Wave" as early as a few decades ago, after "Faces, Villages", more people really know her and like her.
The 90-year-old Varda is far more well-known than when she was younger, and the changes of the times have given her more cultural connotations, and she has always been just doing what she wants to do, what she can do, and tirelessly.
Whether you are a fan of the "New Wave" or only learned about her in the circle of friends yesterday, this article can close the distance between you and Varda, and have a more vivid understanding of this artist and grandmother who is loved but has just passed away.
The day before the 90th Academy Awards, nominees from all over the world attended the official nomination luncheon, and in addition to the celebrities and film giants who were dressed up, there was an old lady whose painting style did not seem to fit such an occasion, and this person was Agnès Varda.
Wait, this is not Agnès Varda, but cardboard with a picture of Agnès Varda!!
It turned out that the 89-year-old Varda grandmother was absent from the luncheon, but she did not lose the young man at all, and she asked the artist she worked with, Jean René, to bring a printed humanoid cardboard, which not only resolved the embarrassment of absence, but was not present, but the most eye-catching.
This is 89-year-old Varda
"Face, Village" was nominated for the 90th Academy Awards for Best Documentary, and in this Internet era, many fans also watched this film through various channels for the first time, feeling the charm of Agnès Varda-style films.
Poster of "Faces, Villages"
But what about "Faces, Villages"?
Who is Varda? Belgium came out of the film master
"Wow" Erda
Although Agnès Varda is often introduced as a French female director, she is actually Belgian. Today Varda was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1928 to the son of an engineer of Greek descent and his mother from the small southern French town of Sete.
Varda at a young age
At the age of 18, Varda came to Paris, France, to study while escaping the war. She initially studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and earned a degree in literature and psychology, but soon she grew tired of it.
Recalling this very painful memory, she recalls: "[The lessons here] are stupid, outdated, abstract, offensive, and not suitable for people of this age." Unwillingly, she went to the Louvre to study art history and then switched to photography at voguelar school, a decision that changed the course of her life.
After graduation, she successfully found a job as a photographer and became a full-time cinematographer at the National Theatre, where she met Sylvia Monforte and Philip Novare, two of the two main actors of her film debut, Short Horns.
Photographer Varda in China
She worked as a photographer here for ten years, during which time Varda began to make photographs and films, constantly exploring the connection between the two art forms, questioning the meaning of composition, light and shadow, and time combined, in her own words: "I take pictures, I also make films, or I put pictures in pictures, or I put pictures in movies." ”
The man who had the greatest influence on Varda's art and life appeared in 1958, jacques Demi, a young man obsessed with Max Ofes films, two literary youths who saw each other and held hands until the death of Jacques Demi in 1990, when Varda completed the final commentary on this lifelong fate with a film "Jacques Demi of Nantes".
Arun Renai, Varda, Jacques Demi
It was also that year that Claude Chabrol's Pretty Serges was released in theaters in Paris, announcing the transformation of the film bad boys known as the "Hawkes" of the Film Handbook into directors, trying to break with film traditions and put Bazin's theory of scene scheduling on the screen, and Varda was the "godmother" of these boys.
Why?
Unintentional willow planting is a new wave of godmothers how to cultivate
Varda also had to hold Demy when filming
Varda actually does not have a deep "understanding" of movies.
In her own words, it's only possible to see 20 movies at the age of 25, which is certainly not as much as the movies you're reading this article. But it is this "sense of distance" from film that gives Varda a unique perspective when creating film. There is no inherent film thinking to limit, completely based on the perception of an artist, looking for a new form of film existence.
When Varda started making films, she was actually shooting with the mind of a photographer, she knew where to put the camera, but she did not necessarily deliberately arrange the various elements in the picture, but presented it in a more natural way, aesthetically similar to the later French New Wave films.
Varda and Demi
Her feature film debut, The Short Horn Affair, was filmed in the village of Cape Short near her mother's hometown of Seth, where the family took refuge in world war during World War II and even lived in a fishing boat for a while.
As mentioned above, the two main actors of the film are known by Varda at work, both colleagues and friends, and there is not much remuneration when shooting the film, while the other actors in the film are all villagers of this small fishing village, this non-professional team from the production point of view, greatly reduced the cost of the film, from an artistic point of view can also be seen as the influence of neorealism spread to France.
Poster of "The Short Horned Affair"
But for Varda, in reality, she simply returned to a place in her own memory, starting the track of an artistic career from where she was rooted.
Her inspiration for the film was Faulkner's novel Wild Palm, in which two non-intervening narrative lines mimic the setting of the novel, a couple who break through worldly constraints but are in crisis, a Mississippi farm and a slave conflict, and in the film become another couple in crisis, a small fishing village in southern France and a government official, the two alternate to complete a certain harmony.
Of course, "Short-Horned Love Affair" is not simply a form of imitation literature, although the two alternating but unrelated narrative lines seem bold enough at the time, in fact, such films are not common today.
With his own artistic inspiration, Varda uses 35mm film to record the loose set of this small village, but the undercurrent of the story, the natural emotions and scenes of the field shooting constitute the audience's image perception of the filming location, and this is part of Varda's growing memory, Varda intentionally or unintentionally shows the consciousness of being a "film author".
"The Short Horn Affair"
The presence of such author films around Truffaut and Godard is obviously very encouraging, and these critics who make a living seem to see examples of the feasibility of achieving contemporary French filmmaking from their own cinematic perspectives.
The filming cost of "Short Horns" was only $14,000, which was far lower than the cost of mainstream film production at that time, and even lower than the cost of later New Wave films.
And "Short Corner Affair" is so in line with the aesthetics of the new wave trendsetters, realism, long shot aesthetics, and thorough modern film practice.
Even Bazin, the spiritual leader of the New Wave, praised The Short Horn: the completely free style gives the impression that we are presented with a work that obeys only the dreams and desires of the author, rather than other external obligations, which is rare in film.
Varda was praised by Bazin and Truffaut, and she herself was a bit of a surprise, because before that she didn't have much contact with these guys in the Film Handbook, but after that, she became the precursor to the new wave of cinema that followed, and it was she and her films that pointed the way for these young people, so it was well-deserved to be called the "Godmother of the New Wave".
I know a little bit about Varda
You can also learn more about her
1. Although Varda is revered as the Godmother of the New Wave and has associated with the Film Manual School, because of the literary tendencies and experimental nature of Varda's films, she is generally classified as the representative director of Left Bank films, that is, writer's films.
2. From the 1960s onwards, Varda's creation tended to documentary films, and during this period, many documentary short films with the characteristics of the times were made, including "The Black Panther Party", "Greetings to the Cubans", "Voice of Women: Our Body, Our Sex", etc., and one that has to be mentioned, Varda and Jean-Luc Godard, Julius Evans, Claude Lerouche, Chris Mark and other seven film masters jointly produced the documentary "Far Away from Vietnam".
3. Varda is widely regarded as a feminist director, but she herself does not emphasize this identity: "I am not a feminist theorist, and everything I do— my photographs, my crafts, my films, my life — is done by my own standards, not like a man." ”
4. Varda lived (literally) with Jacques Demi for 31 years, and together they had two children, son Matthew Demi and daughter Rosali Varda, both of whom entered the film industry.
Matthew Demi directed the film American, produced by Varda himself, starring Salma Hayek and Geraldine Chaplin (one of Chaplin's most famous children), and he has also starred in several films, many of which were directed by his parents.
Rosali Varda is more active in the French film industry as a costume designer, and she is also the producer of "Face, Village".
5. Although Jacques Demi and Varda are close, Demi is actually bisexual and died of AIDS in 1990, but this has not affected Varda's deep and ongoing love for Demi.
A year after Jacques Demi's death, Varda filmed a film for him, Jacques Demi of Nantes, using the film to write about her thoughts and love, looking for the life of Demi's childhood in which she was not involved; 4 years later, Varda made a film with the theme of Demi, "The World of Jacques Demi", continuing to pursue the thoughts of his lover in light and shadow, after all, film is the art of playing with time, perhaps this is the deepest way to express love.
6. Agnès Varda was very close to the late Gates lead singer and rock star Jim Morrison, and he even made a cameo appearance in Varda's film Lion, Love, Lie, and visited the set of Banvarda and Jacques Demi several times.
Morrison moved to Paris in the 1970s and had a personal relationship with Varda, who morrison called Varda "the only person in Paris who could be trusted." Morrison's career and private life were in chaos at this time, and Varda tried everything to help Morrison get out of the trough, even asking a yoga teacher to help Morrison quit his addiction, but to no avail, the hopeless rock poet died on July 3, 1971, Varda was one of the five members attending his funeral, the entire funeral lasted only 8 minutes, and there was no priest to pray his last.
7. Agnès Varda signed the famous 343 Manifesto declaring himself an abortion illegally. Feminist and liberal movements were on the rise in the 1970s, but French women still did not have the right to have abortions, when French women had to choose to go to The United Kingdom for abortion after an unintended pregnancy. In April 1971, many prominent French women, including Agnès Varda, Beauvoir, and Catherine Deneuve, bravely signed the declaration to legalize abortion in France.
8. Agnès Varda made a short film " On the Bridge of McDonald " , while preparing for "Chio at Five to Seven", and the two protagonists of the short film were Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Carina, who were pregnant and the two were preparing to enter the most famous marriage in the history of cinema. In the short film you can see Godard immersed in the sweetness of love, and he is enjoying the happiest time of his life, and Varda records all this.
More than five Agnès Varda movies that must be seen in "Faces, Villages"
"Face, Village"
Starring: Agnès Varda, Jean Genet
A recently popular documentary has made more and more young fans familiar with Varda. Varda and Jean-Genet drive through France, decorating the ordinary lives of ordinary people with their artists' creativity, which also implies Varda's leftist political views.
The Beach of Agnès
Starring: Agnès Varda, Jane Birkin, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jacques Demi
Ten years ago, Varda made this documentary to celebrate her birthday, using images from the past to tell the emotions of the present, including Varda's humorous nature and inspiration as an artist, as well as a deep attachment to Jacques Demi.
Jacques Demi of Nantes
Starring: Philippe Maron
The film was shot a year after jacques Demi's death, and Varda uses a camera to write down his thoughts about his lover. In the film, Demi is still a child, a stage in Demi's life that Varda has not personally participated in, and she enters Demi's childhood in this way, composing an elegy of love with artistic talent.
"The Fallen Woman of the End of the World"
Starring: Sandrina Bernell
The Fallen Woman is the only film in Varda to win the highest award at three major film festivals, winning the Golden Lion award at the 42nd Venice Film Festival, and tells the story of a dead man, the tenacity of a woman who pursues freedom and the price she must pay...
"Chio at Five to Seven"
Starring: Colline Marchard
Considered to be the most mature work of Varda's style in the New Wave period, the beautiful Chiao wanders the streets of Paris, and the various characters and the street scenery that pass before their eyes write lyric poems of light and shadow.
Easter Eggs (1)
Varda is in China
In 1957, Varda was invited by Premier Zhou Enlai to come to China as a full member of a foreign delegation. Passionate about photography, she took up the position of photographer, carrying heavy photographic equipment, and recorded the faces of different provinces and cities in China at that time in the form of travel, including Shenyang, Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Yunnan...
Easter Eggs (2)
Light and shadow of photographer Varda
Click on the mini program and answer the questions to win the jackpot!
↙ Click "Read the original article" to see more highlights >>> X-Men: Dark Phoenix released a new poster for comic book