Film Festival 09 - The Beaches of Agnes
The Beaches of Agnes
Les Plages des Agnes, France 2008, 110m
Director: Agnes Varda
Festivals: Venice, Toronto, London, Amsterdam Documentary
2008
Agnès Varda was the lone female amongst the New Wave
directors who shook up French cinema in the 50s and helped set the
agenda for cultural revolution in the 60s. At almost 80 she has
created a playfully idiosyncratic memoir of her sentimental
education and life as an artist. Responding eagerly to the
possibilities offered by digital technology, she sets up tableaux
that recall her earlier work and places herself within her old
photographs and extracts from her films (Vagabond, The Gleaners and
I and many more). She revisits old haunts to reminisce fondly with
collaborators she's not seen for decades. She discusses the years
spent with her husband/soulmate, the late Jacques Demy, her
feminism, her romantic adventures and the rewards of independence.
It's an illuminating account of a wonderfully full life and the
best possible proof of her perpetual, instinctive reinvention of
herself as an artist. - BG. "She is such an inspiring and creative
presence - this film should be given to all young hopeful
film-makers." - Lizzie Franke, Sight & Sound
In French and English, with English subtitles
