Series Site
Friday, March 13 – Thursday, April 2
Pioneering French filmmaker Agnès Varda's (1928-2019) stature as one of the greatest of all filmmakers has only grown over the years. Making films over six decades, she helped launch the French New Wave and then surpassed it with the distinctive brand of filmmaking she called cinécriture (cine-writing). Moving freely between the authorship of fiction film and the spontaneity of documentary while also working prolifically as a visual artist and photographer, she created two dozen features and many short works.
From her tour-de-force and linchpin of the French New Wave CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7 (1962), the underseen science-fiction romance LES CRÉATURES (1966), the beloved documentaries THE GLEANERS AND I (2000) and THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS (2009) (both Film Forum premieres), to the poetic, formally challenging shorts that punctuate her œuvre, L’Opéra-mouffe (1958) and the American-shot studies Uncle Yanco (1967) and Black Panthers (1968). Varda’s filmography reveals her endless creativity and playfulness, deep humanism, and constant engagement with the world. Varda married filmmaker Jacques Demy in 1962, a partnership that lasted until his death in 1990 and resulted in two films about his life, JACQUOT DE NANTES (1991) and THE WORLD OF JACQUES DEMY (1995). She was ahead of her time in addressing themes of sexism, labor exploitation, immigrant rights, and race relations and inspired generations of filmmakers. She was recognized with major awards at the Cannes, Berlin, and Venice Film Festivals, as well as an honorary Oscar® at the 2017 Academy Awards.