Agnès Varda

by

Sarah Cooper

• LAST REVIEWED: 22 August 2023
• LAST MODIFIED: 22 August 2023
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791286-0004

Introduction

Agnès Varda (b. 1928, Ixelles, Belgium–d. 2019, Paris, France) is without doubt the most significant woman director in the history of French cinema. Known affectionately as the mother and then grandmother of the French Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), her filmmaking career spans seven decades, and her more recent work is as innovative and critically acclaimed as was her groundbreaking debut, La Pointe Courte (1954). She was awarded an honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015 and was the first woman to receive this prestigious prize. This accolade was followed two years later with an honorary Oscar at the 2017 Academy Awards. The majority of her works emerged on the margins of official production and distribution, and she produced most of her films through her own company, Ciné-Tamaris. She made a wide variety of documentaries, fictions, shorts, and features, along with a number that lie between in style and length. All her films testify to her creativity as an artist, as does her written work throughout her career. Her move into installation art in the twenty-first century reflects her continued capacity for experimental innovation. This article charts the different facets of her work as filmmaker, writer, and installation artist, and also the relation her work bears to painting and photography.

General Overviews

Since its inception in the 1950s, Varda’s filmmaking career has attracted much interest, and, in addition to the erudite intellectual and warm popular engagement with her output evident across the publications cited here, Varda herself has spoken and written about her own work in compelling fashion in Varda 1994. Following the ground-breaking research into Varda’s work in Flitterman-Lewis 1996, there has been a steady increase in publications devoted to her oeuvre over the years, and this is set to continue long into the future as her work inspires new generations. There are many useful directory entries on Varda, such as Carter 2002, and bibliographical sources in scholars’ studies of her work, like Fiant, et al. 2009. Smith 1998, Bénézet 2014, Conway 2015, and DeRoo 2017 are comprehensive monographs. Two rich edited volumes, Barnet 2016 and Kennedy-Karpat and Çiçekoğlu 2022, assess her legacy and abiding influence. Her work also has a valuable website devoted to it Ciné-Tamaris).

• Barnet, Marie-Claire, ed. Agnès Varda Unlimited: Image, Music, Media. Moving Image 6. Cambridge, UK: Legenda, 2016.

  Excellent collection of essays that broaches the entire span of Varda’s work across different media: from the photographic, through the filmic, to her installations.

• Bénézet, Delphine. The Cinema of Agnès Varda: Resistance and Eclecticism. New York: Wallflower, 2014.

  DOI: 10.7312/columbia/9780231169752.001.0001

  Wonderful study of Varda’s production as a whole, which offers highly persuasive readings of her practice from filmmaking through installation work to her television documentary series Agnès de ci de là Varda.

• Carter, Helen. “Agnès Varda.” Senses of Cinema 22 (September–October 2002).

  Good overview of Varda’s work as part of the Great Filmmakers directory on the Senses of Cinema website.

• Ciné-Tamaris.

  Devoted primarily to the promotion of Varda’s and Jacques Demy’s films. It contains detailed filmographical information as well as news relating to the ongoing circulation and exhibition of Varda’s work.

• Conway, Kelley. Agnès Varda. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2015.

  DOI: 10.5406/illinois/9780252039720.001.0001

  Rich study of Varda’s career from her earliest films to Les plages d’Agnès and her installation work.

• DeRoo, Rebecca J. Agnès Varda between Film, Photography, and Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017.

  DOI: 10.1525/9780520968202

  Inspiring interdisciplinary exploration of Varda’s work across the boundaries of art, photography, and film.

• Fiant, Antony, Roxane Hamery, and Éric Thouvenel, eds. Agnès Varda: Le cinéma et au-delà. Rennes, France: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009.

  Comprehensive anthology of Varda’s work that emerged from a 2007 colloquium at the University of Rennes, which includes discussion of her installation art as well as some excellent articles on her earlier films.

• Flitterman-Lewis, Sandy. To Desire Differently: Feminism and the French Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

  This landmark work remains an essential reference point in the study of Varda. Varda is positioned in this book alongside Germaine Dulac and Marie Epstein. Originally published in 1990.

• Kennedy-Karpat, Colleen, and Çiçekoğlu, Feride, eds. The Sustainable Legacy of Agnès Varda: Feminist Practice and Pedagogy. New York: Bloomsbury, 2022.

  Important collection of essays, which considers intersections between creation, connection, and environment that lie at the heart of Varda’s work and which features a fascinating final section on teaching Varda.

• Kline, T. Jefferson, ed. Agnès Varda: Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014.

  Very useful collection of the interviews that Varda has given throughout her career.

• Smith, Alison. Agnès Varda. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1998.

  Wide-ranging and intelligent introduction to Varda’s work up to the time of publication in the late 1990s. Smith’s approach is thematic, and her style is accessible.

• Varda, Agnès. Varda par Agnès. Paris: Éditions Cahiers du Cinéma et Ciné-Tamaris, 1994.

  Brilliant portal into Varda’s work in her own poignant and playful style, combining a mixture of text and image, along with personal and professional reflections on her life and work.