Varda par Agnès

Das Vermächtnis der im März 90-jährig verstorbenen Filmemacherin und Fotografin Agnès Varda: eine Vorlesung in Form einer unterhaltsamen Regie-Masterclass, die Visualisierung eines gleichnamigen Buches aus dem Jahr 1994. Varda sitzt auf verschiedenen Bühnen vor Publikum und erläutert eher assoziativ denn chronologisch Themen und Prinzipien, die ihrer Arbeit an den Grenzen zwischen Spiel-, Dokumentarfilm und Essay zugrunde liegen: Feminismus, undogmatische linke Politik und ein nie versiegendes Interesse an anderen Leuten. Sich selbst hat Varda dabei nie besonders wichtig genommen, entsprechend wird sie in Erinnerung bleiben: gewitzt, fantasievoll und den Menschen auf liebevolle Weise zugewandt. (Lars Penning)
 
Mit VIENNALE-TRAILER 2004: VIENNALE WALZER.

During the 1990s, in her 60s, Agnès Varda memorialised her late husband Jacques Demy across a series of films. In 2008, turning 80 and facing an intimation of mortality, she memorialized herself in THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS. Ten years later, just before turning 90 and dying in March 2019, she provided another kind of selfretrospective in VARDA PAR AGNÈS. It begins in a theatre, as a masterclass before a rapt audience; but soon, with her typical dexterity of montage (cinécriture as she called it), it becomes a weave of many talks, extracts, snippets from self-produced DVD extras, and invited testimonies from select collaborators. This is Varda as she chose to present herself to us, in the image she carefully sculpted – energetic, affable, playful, boundlessly creative – with only a few tell-tale hints of her underlying toughness and tenacity as both artist and businesswoman. Throwing strict biographical chronology aside, Varda takes us on a tour through her films (major and minor, short and long), lets us glimpse her photographs, and then transits to the 21st century world of digital cameras and museum installations. What to do with her old film prints? Recycle them as cabinsculptures. (Adrian Martin)

With VIENNALE-TRAILER 2004: VIENNALE WALZER.