After printing enlarged portraits of ordinary people in rural French towns, Agnès Varda admitted she was fulfilling her greatest wish, at age 89. “Meet new faces and take photos, so that they don’t fall into the holes of my memory,” said the filmmaker in the 2017 documentary “Faces, Villages”. That year, she became the first director to win an honorary Academy Award for her entire career.
Varda would die less than two years later, at age 90, of cancer. “Faces, Villages” expresses her return to photography, a profession to which she devoted herself before becoming a representative of the new wave – she was an isolated female voice in the movement that changed cinema around the world by favoring experimentation. Photos from her youth are now on display, most of them in new ways, at the Moreira Salles Institute, which will also screen the director’s films in the coming months.
The exhibition in São Paulo follows another exhibition in Paris, at the Carnavalet Museum, “The Paris of Agnès Varda De-Ci, De-Là”, with images made in the 1950s. At the time, Varda shared an apartment with her lover, the sculptor Valentine Schlegel, in the bohemian Parisian district of Montparnasse. The black-and-white photos showed artists like Italian director Federico Fellini and American sculptor Alexander Calder in light of a certain hopeful decadence in postwar Parisian alleyways, or ordinary people going about their daily lives in the comings and goings of the streets.
The photographs brought to Brazil, however, are not limited to the walls of Paris and reveal a broader panorama of Varda’s production. They show behind the scenes of “La Pointe-Courte”, his first film, and the rehearsals of the Griots, a pioneering company of black theater in France. There are also rare colorful shots from Varda’s travels to Cuba and China.
“It hasn’t been long since Agnès’ photographic work was exhibited,” says Rosalie Varda, producer of “Visages, Villages” and curator of the exhibition at the IMS. If it weren’t for her last name, her small stature, emerald green eyes, and prominent nose would give away that she is the artist’s daughter.
“When she started, it was difficult to be a woman and a photographer. Agencies were aimed more at men,” says her daughter. But Varda is not discouraged. In 1957, she went to China to photograph a delegation of French politicians, but she was more interested in the families and temples of Beijing. He captured evidence of an energetic society before the Cultural Revolution, with street performers performing acrobatics, popular festivals and even fishermen at work.
With photography, Varda trained her eye for cinema and cast real people as protagonists. “She gave this extraordinary importance to people. Agnès never forgot that she was a woman and that this meant a specific interest in the world and the people who were suffering,” explains João Fernandes, artistic director of the IMS and curator of the exhibition alongside Rosalie Varda.
“La Pointe-Courte” tells the story of the journey of a couple who return to the husband’s native village, where they discuss their relationship amid the daily flow of other residents. The film became a precursor of the new wave, although experts point out that Varda received less praise than her male colleagues at the time, and was not rightly recognized until later, in the 1980s.
Her films broke new ground by capturing female experiences without the filters of sexualization or male dependency. An example is “Cléo das 5 à 7”, from 1962, which will be presented at the IMS in January. The film follows two hours in the life of Florence Victoire, an up-and-coming singer who awaits the results of a test to find out if she has cancer.
It is no coincidence that today several famous filmmakers of the new generation have already declared themselves inspired by Varda’s work, such as the Spaniard Carla Simón, who competed this year for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and the Frenchwoman Céline Sciamma, director of “Portrait of a Girl on Fire”.
Unlike companions like Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Demy – whom she married – Varda was not a film buff when she started filming. His references were in visual arts and literature. If today French writers like Annie Ernaux and Éduard Louis are shaking up writing by mixing memories, characters and fiction, Varda has been testing autofiction in the cinema for more than five decades.
In the director’s new biography, “A Complicated Passion,” released last year, author Carrie Rickey explores how the filmmaker’s work became an extension of the personal events of her life. One example is “Os Renegados,” winner of the Golden Lion for 40 years, the highest honor at the Venice Film Festival, Italy.
The film is based on the story of a young homeless woman met by Agnès Varda. By recounting her misadventures, the filmmaker paints a portrait of female inadequacy in contemporary society.
The blending of fact and fiction was a process after an event was captured, almost like developing photographic film in a darkroom. The creative method was already in development when she was a photographer, and her clicks immortalized the accidents created by Varda herself.
One example is “Fidel with Wings,” an image featured in the exhibit, taken during a trip to Cuba. In it, the leader of the time, Fidel Castro, appears seated between two stones that resemble angel wings. Varda was walking with him on a beach when she saw the curiously shaped rock and asked him to position himself there.
Without meaning to, she playfully depicted a historical moment when, in the midst of the Cuban revolution, Fidel was seen by many as a savior. “Henri Cartier-Bresson was looking for the decisive moment. Agnès, the non-decisive moments. She was open to what was happening,” says João Fernandes, the commissioner.
The trip to Cuba was one of many Varda took on her own, balancing motherhood and education. “She saw a Cuba that no longer exists. There was hope for a new way of living. She was always in the right place, at the right time and could understand what was happening,” says Rosalie Varda, remembering her mother’s ability not to judge. From the Caribbean country, she brought her daughter a doll.
Another important stop: the United States, where the filmmaker rubbed shoulders with Andy Warhol, Jim Morrison and Catherine Deneuve. There she recorded one of her most famous documentaries, “The Black Panthers”, one of the rare video documentations of the American anti-racist group, also on display at the IMS and with behind-the-scenes photos on display.
With the advent of digital cameras, it became easier for Varda to film. She released “Os Catadores e Eu” in 2000, before diving back into her photographic archives and “Faces, Villages”. He also devoted his last years to visual arts and participated in the Venice Biennale in 2003 with the work “Patatutopia”, in which he analyzes food waste. She went to the event, considered the most important in the art world, dressed as a potato.
Even when he tackles serious subjects, his sense of humor disarms the viewer. “I remember that she saw beauty in everything, in every detail of life. In the restaurant, in a villa, on the ceiling, on the floor, on the table. She was a gymnast of the spirit,” says French artist JR in an audio message to the journalist. Famous for his installations with giant photographs, he accompanies Varda in “Faces, Villages”.
One of the memories that Rosalie Varda has of her mother is that, during walks or trips, she would stop without warning. “She would say ‘look, Rosalie’ and take her time to observe,” he says. “And time to watch is a luxury in our society, where everything is fast and we are always on our cell phones.
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