Agnès Varda. Cléo from 5 to 7. 2004

egs.edu/ Agnès Varda, Professor of Film at The European Graduate School / EGS. Sharing insights around her films, in particular to Cléo from 5 to 7. Fragment of a lecture for the students of the Division of Philosophy, Art & Critical Thought at the European Graduate School EGS, Saas-Fee, Switzerland. 2004.
Agnès Varda (b. 1928) is a photographer, film director, Paris-based key figure in modern film history, and one of the world's leading filmmakers. Agnès Varda is also a professor of film and documentaries at The European Graduate School / EGS. She was born on May 30, 1928, in Ixelles, Belgium, with the slightly different name of Arlette Varda. Her father is Greek, and her mother is of French origins. She escaped from Belgium in 1940 to go live in Sète, France, with her family where she spent her teenager years. Agnès Varda studied at the École du Louvre with a focus on art history and photography at the École des Beaux-Arts. She then went on to work at the Théâtre National Populaire in Paris as a photographer, which was directed by the famous French actor and filmmaker Jean Villar.
Agnès Varda’s work is often connected to the French New Wave, and her early films were clear precedents for the stylistic tendencies which the New Wave directors delineated. However, her work remains particular to her own unique perspective on the world, resisting the paradigms of movements in art and film. The themes and issues in her films focus on eroticism and age, death and time, the collective unconscious, and the presentability of social taboos. Her work is distinct from the French New Wave also for its crossing of genres, as she is known as much for her documentaries and shorts as for her feature-length dramas. Not limiting herself to the borders of France, her films have been shot in a variety of locations, including the United States, Cuba, and Iran.
The documentary form is simultaneously utilized and deconstructed in Agnès Varda's films. While many of her films are considered to be proper documentaries, their fundamental undermining of the objectivity of the documentary form, their blending of seriousness and play, as well as the introduction of subjectivity bring her films into an entirely different category. The subjective factor is something which Agnès Varda does not turn away from or try to cover up, as she readily integrates herself into her films. One example is in the film Uncle Yanco (1967), in which she is having dinner with her Uncle Yanco and she gestures to one of the dinner guests to shut off the camera. This moment, which is kept in the final cut, is a point where documentary and narrative cross and are no longer distinguishable.
Between 1968 and 1970, she lived in Los Angeles and made a Hollywood hippy movie called Lions love. She is the first director to become interested in Harrison Ford. It is also during this time that she met the Lizard King, Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors. In fact, she ended up being one of the rare people to have been at Morrison’s funeral in Paris’ cemetery Père-Lachaise in 1971. Once back in France, she directed an optimistic feminist movie: L’une chante, l’autre pas (1977). In 1971, she is one of the 343 women to have signed the “Manifesto of the 343,” thereby admitting to have had an abortion and making themselves vulnerable to possible prosecution. Varda went back to live in Los Angeles from 1979 to 1981 and during that time made two documentaries: Murs, murs and Documenteur.
Agnès Varda has directed many films, long and short, including the following: La Pointe-Courte (1955), La cocotte d'azur (1958), O saisons, ô châteaux (1958), Les fiancés du pont Mac Donald ou (Méfiez-vous des lunettes noires) (1961), Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962), Salut les cubains (1963), Le bonheur (1965), Les créatures (1966), Oncle Yanco (1967), Lions Love (1969), Plaisir d'amour en Iran (1976), L'une chante, l'autre pas (1977), Documenteur (1981), Ulysse (1982), Sans toit ni loi (1985), T'as de beaux escaliers tu sais (1986), Kung-fu master! (1988), Jane B. par Agnès V. (1988), Jacquot de Nantes (1991), Les cent et une nuits de Simon Cinéma (1994), and Le lion volatil (2003).