SHORTS FROM AGNЀS

SHORT FILMS

CINÉVARDAPHOTO, 2004
France | 35 mm, Color & Black-and-White, 96’ | French, English
Cinévardaphoto consists of three short films that move in reverse chronological order. Varda, who in The Gleaners and I took on gleaners as both a philosophical and political act, now presents examples from her own life, giving her work a personal dimension. The most obvious connection between the three films is that all of them were inspired by photographs. As the title suggests, Varda, who takes a position midway between cinema and photography, shows the viewer her own past and present as well as the past and present of photography and cinema, doing so without resorting to nostalgia, on the contrary once again grasping life with her undiminished passion and sensitivity.

YDESSA, THE BEARS AND ETC. (YDESSA, LES OURS ET ETC.), 2004
The longest of the three films and the only one filmed digitally, Ydessa, the Bears and Etc. is about an exhibit, from which the film takes its name, by the collector and curator Ydessa Hendeles, the daughter of a family that survived the holocaust. The exhibit, which contains thousands of photographs of people posing with teddy bears, focuses on the loss of innocence in Nazi Germany. As in The Gleaners and I, Varda turns her camera towards those who are neglected because they are ordinary and gives them meaning and value.

ULYSSE, 1982
The second film, Ulysse, follows the traces of a photograph she took in 1954 when she was still a student. In this film Varda speaks to the models in a black-and-white photograph of a naked man, an intimidated child and a dead goat by the seaside. While primarily putting the photograph into context, she reflects on her own experiences of taking photographs and the relationship between artist and object and the universal and the personal.

A SALUTE TO THE CUBANS (SALUT LES CUBAINS), 1963
The third and last short film, A Salute to the Cubans, is a 30-minute collage of black-and-white photographs that Varda took on a visit to Cuba shortly after the Cuban Revolution, narrated by the famous actress Michel Piccoli, showing daily life in Cuba as it crossed a historic threshold.

SHORTS FROM AGNЀS 1

ALONG THE COAST (DU CÔTÉ DE LA CÔTE), 1958
France | DCP, Black-and-White, 24’ | French
Actors: Roger Coggio, Anne Olivier, Jacopo Nizi
A nostalgic and humorous travelogue filmed under the bright blue sky of the French Riviera.

ELSA THE ROSE (ELSA LA ROSE), 1965
France | DCP, Black-and-White, 20’ | French
Actors: Louis Aragon, Michel Piccoli, Elsa Triolet
This film tells the story of the love, marriage and youth of the poets Louis Aragon and Elsa Triolet. Narrated by the Elsa we know from Aragon’s poems.

UNCLE YANCO (ONCLE YANCO), 1967
France, U.S.A. | DCP, Color, 22’ | French, English
Actors: Jean Varda, Tom Luddy, Agnès Varda
While visiting San Francisco, the director learns that she has a relative, who she has never met, named Jean Varda, nicknamed “Yanco”. Yanco is a painter who lives a colorful life with his hippie friends on a houseboat in Sausalito.

BLACK PANTHERS, 1968
France, U.S.A. | DCP, Black-and White, 30’ | French
Actors: H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver
This documentary shows footage of one of the protests in Oakland calling for the release of Huey Newton, one of the founders of the Black Panther Party and contains interviews with leading figures of the party, including Newton.

WOMEN REPLY (OUR BODIES, OUR SEX)
(RÉPONSE DE FEMMES (NOTRE CORPS, NOTRE SEXE)), 1975
France | DCP, Color, 8’ | French
Actors: Catherine, Agnès Varda, Maryline Even
In this film made for a television channel, the director brings various women in front of the camera and asks them questions about sex and desire, advertisements and motherhood, and the women reply.

THE PLEASURE OF LOVE IN IRAN (PLAISIR D'AMOUR EN IRAN), 1976
France | DCP, Color, 6’ | French
Actors: Valérie Mairesse, Ali Rafie, Thérèse Liotard
The young couple we met previously in One Sings, the Other Doesn’t find reflections of their love in Iran’s unequalled architecture.

SHORTS FROM AGNЀS 2

THE FIANCÉS OF THE BRIDGE MAC DONALD (BEWARE OF DARK SUNGLASSES)
(LES FIANCÉS DU PONT MAC DONALD OU (MÉFIEZ-VOUS DES LUNETTES NOIRES)), 1961
France | DVD, Black-and-White, 3’ | French
Actors: Anna Karina, Jean-Luc Godard, Emilienne Caille
In this short film, which also appears in her film Cléo from 5 to 7, Varda parodies American silent comedy movies. Among the actors in the film, we see familiar faces such as the director Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina and Eddie Constantine.

THE SO-CALLED CARYATIDS (LES DITES CARIATIDES), 1984
France | DVD, Color, 13’ | French
Images of the Caryatids, statues of undraped or half-draped women encountered frequently in the architecture of Paris, accompanied by Baudelaire’s poetry and Offenbach’s music.

7 RMS, KTCH, BATH… (NOT TO BE MISSED)
(7P., CUIS., S. DE B., ... (À SAISIR)), 1984
France | DVD, Color, 27’ | French
Actors: Hervé Mangani, Louis Bec, Saskia Cohen Tanugi
As the director wanders through a large, unfurnished apartment that is up for sale, she leads us to question the various meanings we attribute to the concept of “empty space”.

YOU’VE GOT BEAUTIFUL STAIRS, YOU KNOW (T'AS DE BEAUX ESCALIERS, TU SAIS), 1986
France | DVD, Color, 3’ | French
Actors: Isabelle Adjani, Agnès Varda
Varda’s short tribute to the 50^th anniversary of the Cinémathèque Française in 1986, narrated by Isabelle Adjani, presenting the place’s famous stairs and classic film images also revolving around stairs.

THE VOLATILE LION (LE LION VOLATIL), 2003
France | DVD, Color, 12’ | French
Actors: Julie Depardieu, Frédérick E. Grasser-Hermé, Silvia Urrutia
Varda has often focused masterfully on architecture in her films and this time she relates a love story that unfolds before the Belfort Lion in the 14^th arrondissement of Paris.