Agnes Varda
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Load and Play: Killers, Wage Slaves and Varda in the Sun
Agnès Varda in California Several directors of or related to the French New Wave flirted with Hollywood, from those who actually completed studio pictures (François Truffaut, Jacques Demy) to those whose efforts crashed and burned (most famously Jean-Luc Godard, whose proposed gangster picture with Robert De Niro and Diane Keaton remains one of the most tantalizing unmade films of all time). None of them managed to turn their detours in Los Angeles into as singular a cycle of films as Agnès Varda, whose two periods in the city (in the late ’60s and early ’80s) yielded five highly personal works […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jul 23, 2015 -
“The only place to execute some kind of power was the film set”: Agnieszka Holland on her career
Agnieszka Holland’s first taste of Hollywood was a roller coaster ride. Literally. It was 1986 and her war drama Angry Harvest was up for an Oscar. “When you’ve been nominated for a foreign Oscar in those times,” the 65-year-old Polish-born director recalled, “one of the attractions that the American Academy gave the nominees was a free trip to Disneyland.” It was an unexpected reward after toiling on a film that she and her crew made for “no money, no money,” she explained to an appreciative audience at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox earlier this week. The shoot was so difficult that Holland […]
by Allan Tong on Apr 3, 2014 -
Watch Agnès Varda’s 1976 Short Film Plaisir d’Amour en Iran
Barely five minutes long, Agnès Varda’s 1976 short Plaisir d’Amour en Iran finds a breadth of emotion in its surroundings. Shot in Esfehan at the Shah Masjed, Varda conveys the blossoming relationship between a French tourist (Valérie Mairesse) and an Iranian (Ali Raffi) across narration, dialogue and, most effectively, architecture. It’s a transported exercise indigenous to its original time and place (France, Rive Gauche/Nouvelle Vague) that proves visuals and words can do their finest work as distinct properties. Read more at UbuWeb.
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 17, 2014 -
What’s In My Instapaper: Sunday Morning Links, 4/8/2012
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, but now that the new issue is shipped and off to the printer, here’s what I’m catching up on. What’s one measure of good dialogue? According to the Physics arIXv Blog at MIT, it’s the memorability of its quotes. A Cornell University study found that there’s a reason lines like “You had me at hello,” “You can’t handle the truth” and “Hasta la vista, baby” lodge themselves in our memories. “The cloud” — that system of networked and very terrestrial computers that store and stream are data — may have […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 8, 2012 -
Angela Ismailos, Great Directors
A curious celebration of cinema and the mix of craft, history and ideology that goes into its making, Angela Ismailos’ Great Directors provides a chance to travel into the minds of ten of the world’s most celebrated film directors. In conversations with Bernardo Bertolucci, David Lynch, Stephen Frears, Agnes Varda, Ken Loach, Liliana Cavani, Todd Haynes, Catherine Breillat, Richard Linklater and John Sayles, Ismailos probes these directors for the secrets of their success while recounting much of the history of post-War world cinema via archival footage, occasionally ponderous black-and-white B-roll of the filmmakers, and mostly insightful voice over commentary. Detailed and […]
by Brandon Harris on Jun 30, 2010
