Faces, Villages (2017)
01. Who is Varda
Varda, as a female creator, a typical elite intellectual, is not arrogant without eating human fireworks, but more like the ordinary nature of the neighbor's grandmother.
In Face, Village, he shouts away from Godard: "I love you, but you're still a big bastard." Love and hate are clear, so cute, and I don't blame netizens for commenting that she said "fairy childlike heart".
As the mother of the New Wave, the representative of the Left Bank, and the only female creator in the history of the New Wave.
She is both a documentary filmmaker and a feature film director, but the label that fits her is not identity, but as a spiritual specimen of the New Wave.
The experimental and avant-garde nature of the form of expression, as well as the penetration of the subject matter, war and social reality, the natural environment, women, artistic creation, and biography, paying attention to everything about people, is the real Varda.
If Marie Curie is to physics, Woolf to literature, Abramovich to performance art, then Varda is to film.
Varda's unique creative approach has deeply influenced the critics of the Film Handbook.
In particular, Hou Mai, even if the form of the film is mostly different from the story, is also based on chance as the main in-depth creation.
The Affair of the Short Horn (1955)
Varda's achievements are undoubtedly dazzling. His debut novel, The Short Horn Affair (1955), a love story that takes place in a small fishing village, captures the fears and hopes of people in the ups and downs of French society.
Profoundness is the foundation of her works, which is the focus of sociologists and artists. At the same time, it is simple and simple, which is the reason why she has gained countless love and likes.
She is truly inclusive of everything. There is a kind of tolerance and respect for the true understanding of human nature, which is also the so-called "immortal qi" mentioned above.
And when you watch Varda, you will inevitably reap the baptism of the soul, as well as the gentle healing from art, and the return of the inner authenticity.
In the Interview with Face Village, Varda was blunt about the interviewer's metaphor of the story diamond:
"For me, it's not a diamond, it's a series of potatoes. It's all simple things, no shiny ideas, no spectacular ideas, just hoping that the audience will really get to know the people in the film. We meet them, pass on our understanding to others, and make the audience like it. “
The Gleaner (2000)
As French film critics Fu Dong and Jia Zhangke commented:
Agnès Varda's films are like giving people a key to discover many secrets of everyday life. For example, she uses a lot of film language between fiction and reality, which may be people's feelings about life.
In the later documentaries, a large number of self-statements, let you go more and more into her heart. That childlike innocence in the face of aging and death is even more unforgettable.
One Sings, One Doesn't Sing (1977)
As the darling of the three major film festivals, he won various awards when he was young.
In the last years of Varda's life, the Oscars (the first female director), Cannes, and San Sebastian also gave Varda a lifetime achievement award.
Only the evaluation in the communiqué of the 68th Cannes Film Organizing Committee is very appropriate and affectionate. A small tree in the wilderness, always pursuing freedom, always full of determination.
Varda is a symbolic figure who sets an example for the younger generation of filmmakers.
Her work and life have always been the pursuit of freedom, challenging the limits, she is always full of strong determination and faith, with a smile to face the obstacles encountered, and constantly realize her dreams.
She is a small tree in the dying wilderness of French cinema.
Agnès Varda's work has always been very experimental in nature, constantly expanding the definition of cinema.
Communiqué of the 68th Cannes Film Organizing Committee
02. Agnès on Varda
Varda, a master creator, had seen fewer than a dozen films before the age of 25.
In Agnès on Varda (2019) (the last documentary of the year she died, Douban scored 9.2), the film, as the title suggests, is about her own past work.
In the film, she talks about how she learned to edit through literature.
Varda studied literature and psychology in his early years and later art history. This also influenced the appropriation and collage of her film creation, and she was destined to be eclectic in the film.
For example, in The Gleaner (2000), she blends Miller's paintings with film and narrative.
Combining the present moment with the other, realism with neorealism, painting with image, this is her talent and talent as an artist.
And how did she create it? In the film, she talks about the three key points of her creation: "inspiration", "creation" and "sharing".
Inspiration is the reason why you make movies, what kind of motivation, ideas, environment, and what kind of accidental events ignite your desire to make movies.
Creation is the way you make a movie, what method you use, what structure you use, whether you create independently or co-create, color or black and white, creation is a process.
Share, you don't make movies for yourself to see, you make movies to show them.
And when she talks about her best-known work, Cleo at May to Seven (1962), she was inspired by two conditions, namely two important backgrounds.
1. Fear of cancer in the 60s
2. There is a producer who wants to make a film with Varda, but it must be a small-cost production
It can only be filmed in Paris as there are no travel costs and no accommodation costs. The plot can only take place in one day, which saves sets.
Hence the "shortened time", one and a half hours, in Paris, at 5 to 7 p.m.
The beautiful singer Cleo (Corinne Marchand) is wandering the streets of Paris, worried that she might get cancer.
And with the juxtaposition and appropriation that Varda is good at, Hans Pepperton's "Death and the Maiden" is placed in a hidden corner, a 90-minute episode about the lonely, ugly, and pale girl's heart.
The film also became a pivotal figure in New Wave cinema and was shortlisted for the Palme d'Or at the 15th Cannes Film Festival in 1962.
Cleo at Five to Seven (1962)
Small cost, short time, film history left a name, everything is possible. For filmmakers, what they really need is never a big production, but a greater understanding of the story and the people of the times.
As Varda says, "Real people have always been at the heart of my work. "But unlike the real in the real movie,
Just as Varda's creations always begin with chance and ideas. Generating ideas — expressing ideas — creating images of oneself — and remembering that this is sharing with others, is simple and clear, and is humorous.
Varda, once an accomplished photographer, just felt that photography was not enough to express what he wanted to express. So, she let the picture move, using music, lines, and narration to express and create.
At the beginning of this film career, it lasted for 65 years. Until the age of 90, there have been works that have been published. In Varda, it all seems very simple, and because of the simplicity, it insists.
The so-called simplicity is only because of love, and there is no difficulty in the eyes of love. There are also no more great signs that just want to be done and must be done. In Varda, there are the light loves that a good life needs, and the heavy necessity of being let go.
03. Growing up in Varda's work
In Agnès on Varda (2019), Varda talks about many of his own works, which we can laugh at as "a master director who gives you a lesson in pulling films."
From a chance encounter and creation in Uncle Janko (1967), at a film festival in San Francisco, a friend asked her if she recognized a painter whose surname was Varda, who lived on a ship.
As soon as they met, they had a sense of the same sight for the subject "Varda", and immediately decided to shoot images about him. And this is what Varda calls a typical example of wonder, when inspiration appears only a day and a half before the start of shooting.
In the passion and desire to create, what is really important is to act immediately.
Uncle Janko (1967)
Discussion of subjective and objective time from Cleo at Five to Seven (1962), and the constraints of small costs.
What's really important about the limitations of creation is to break through them.
Then to "Dagre Street Style" (1976), she photographed the place where she lived, Daguerre Road.
Dagre Street (1976)
Her neighbors nearby, some people who sell things, from whom she bought bread, meat, hardware... There is also a barber, who forms a place that resembles a small village and is the protagonist of her film.
"I love documentaries, there are some good documentaries that have been filmed in very far places in the world, these long journeys are too far away for me, I want to photograph some people or things around me, people or things I know." 」
Regarding the lack of inspiration, it's really important to remember that no person or thing is ordinary.
The happy way of singing, not singing (1977) shows the position and struggle of feminism, and in The Widows of Nouamutier (2006), the opposition between the individual and the collective is expressed by watching the relationship change, and the color fades and repetitions in Happiness (1965) show the wandering of the characters.
Then to the opposite of the push-track shot and the regular reading order in "The Fallen Woman of the End of the World" (1985), it tells the story of the death of an intellectual woman who is dissatisfied with reality and runs away from home.
What is needed about the pain of reality is an understanding that dissolves fragmentation.
The Fallen Woman (1985)
Varda's art always draws people to think about society and people, people and society, how people can really become people. In her work, we spend time listening to the pain of those islanders, and we understand the encounters of others more.
So that we can feel the conflict between the single life of modern society and our inner needs, she is the guide who leads you to freedom, and she is just a small tree in the wilderness.
But every woman, every individual, to be precise, in such a vast world, who is not a vigorous little tree in the wilderness?
Pursue freedom and push the limits. Always full of strong determination and belief, face the obstacles encountered with a smile, and continue to realize their dreams.
Who wouldn't want to be Varda?
epilogue
I was watching a movie at the Film Archive that day, and I was in a bit of a trance, and I didn't feel like Varda had left at all.
It is not until the end of the film that people realize that she really said goodbye to everyone. And this ending, no matter how many times I watch it, I can cry as many times as possible.
In a recent re-screening of the film, when she was filming "The Fallen Woman at the End of the World" (1985), she combined the death of the rebellious girl with the beach picture, just like in this film she also disappeared into the beach.
As she said, her work hides her secret, and her secret may be the life of this rebellious girl.
Only, so loving, so living and creating, so inclusive, so tolerant, so self and the world, so understanding, this moment and the other moment, so gentle and determined, Agnès talked about Varda.
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At last
Hope her films are always with you,
All her love is always with you.
Tonight
Lock in Agnès on Varda.
——
This article is a label with pictures, all from "Agnès on Varda"