Agnès Varda loved the sea and Nantes, and said that she “only needed a camera, a computer and a cat, to live”. They say that cats have nine lives; she had three: the first as a photographer, the second, longer, as a filmmaker, and the third as a “young” visual artist. Starting in the 1950s, she constantly reinvented and redefined the world of images with unparalleled commitment and passion. Her work invites us not just to “want to see”, but to pay attention to and love the complexity of the world with an insatiably curious, reflective and tender gaze. She always found alternative ways of inhabiting this world and, accordingly, knew how to materialize her impressions of it in non-preestablished formats with a deeply personal style.
This seminar would need numerous sessions to address the thousand and one “faces” of Agnès Varda. What it does propose are just some doorways to certain recurring themes that she built with her small hands: subverting images of motherhood, the fruitful relationship between fiction and documentary, the dialogue between chance and more involved writing, the concept of autobiography and the first person, and an initial look at the films made in her beloved California.
This course is part of the activities organized alongside the CCCB’s exhibition Agnès Varda. Photograph, Film, Recycle.
15 October_ Californian Lights and Shadows. Garbiñe Ortega
22 October_ Subversive Motherhoods. Katixa Agirre
29 October_ Chance and Preparation. Inma Merino
5 November_ The Performative and Editing in the Cinema of Agnès Varda
12 November_ It’s Like I’m Filming your Self-Portrait. Autobiography meets (self)portrait in the non-fiction cinema of Agnès Varda.