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Faces/Places was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2018.
OPINION: Walking into Faces/Places last year, all I really knew about French film maker Agnes Varda was that she had made The Gleaners and I, which has been one of my all-time favourite documentaries since I first saw it over a decade ago.
Varda died this March, at the age of 90. Faces/Places (or Visages/Villages) was made in collaboration with the artist JR. Varda travelled through rural France, documenting the journey and JR's series of massive photographic installations, which turn up in the unlikeliest of locations. It's a quietly stunning wee film and an impressive swansong from an artist who is routinely referred to as the grandmother of the French New Wave movement.
So I'm quietly chuffed that the crew at the 2019 NZ International Film Festival have included a small retrospective of Varda's work. I can't think of a filmmaker who deserves the belated exposure more.
NZIFF
The life and works of French filmmaker Agnes Varda are being celebrated as part of this year's New Zealand International Film Festival.
READ MORE:
* French New Wave film pioneer Agnes Varda, dead at 90
* Faces Places: A movie to fall quietly in love with
* Faces Places: Meet the Grand Dame of French New Wave who couldn't care less about her Oscar nomination
* New Zealand International Film festival schedule unveiled
* Bill Gosden: A life devoted to film
NZIFF
Vagabond is routinely described as a feminist thriller, but it's also one of the most influential films to come out of the 1980s.
Daguerréotypes (1976) is Varda's portrait of the people of the street she lived on for 25 years. Varda's camera roams and pauses to observe, driven by her insatiable curiosity and bottomless reserves of empathy and compassion.
Jacquot de Nantes (1991) was made in collaboration with – and as a gift to – husband Jacques Demy, who himself was a very fine director. The pair travelled to the streets and houses Demy had grown up in, to document, or at least re-imagine the arc of Demy's young life and how it had led him to cinema.
As with many of Varda's films, this is not quite a documentary and neither is it fiction. Varda pretty much invented the concept of the "performed documentary" – one that tells us a true story, even as it is imagining and reinterpreting key moments from the past. It's an elegant way to spin a yarn. And, in Varda's hands, a more satisfying and engaging one than a straight documentary.
Le Bonheur (1965) is Varda working as a storyteller, dissecting a marriage coming apart as the young husband is tempted to stray by the new clerk at the local post office. A woman director making a film about male infidelity was mildly scandalous in 1965, but Le Bonheur went on to win acclaim and awards. It's a film that will stand endless interpretation. Varda refuses to exonerate or condemn anyone on screen, but lets her script and cast bring something that looks very much like real-life to the screen.
NZIFF
Jacquot de Nantes is a "performed documentary" - an elegant way to spin a yarn.
Vagabond (1985) is routinely described as a feminist thriller – and also as one of the absolute best and most influential films to come out of the 1980s.
And, of course, Varda by Agnes (2019) is Varda's own, unmissable look back at her own remarkable life and career.
Faces/Places and The Gleaners and I are available at any truly great DVD store or via Amazon. Everything else is on at this year's NZIFF in Wellington and Auckland, with Varda by Agnes screening in other centres. See nziff.co.nz for more details.
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