Assignment: Required Reading and Writing
Read these two pieces on Varda, which give some insights into her philosophy and process.
A recent interview:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/agnes-varda,29840/
How Varda Invented the New Wave:
http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/497-la-pointe-courte-how-agnes-varda-invented-the-new-wave
What I want you to write in response to these articles isn't a direct critique, but a sort of creative response to some of Varda's film-making methods. In one of the below "recommended" readings, Varda is quoted as saying Cleo from 5 to 7 is "“the portrait of a woman painted onto a documentary about Paris.” You can get a sense from "How Agnes Varda Invented the New Wave" that this was a method that is also related to her first film, La Pointe Courte, where she inserted two fictional characters into an almost ethnographic portrait of a fishing village. You couldn't really reduce it to a formula, but in these films there is an interchange between a real place, closely and scrupulously observed, and a character who passes through or inhabits that place.
I'd like you to write two or three paragraphs about a place you know well, that you could imagine being an interesting setting for a film. What is the place, and what are the small, authentic details you would include, to give a realistic feel of that place? Who are the sorts of people you'd ordinarily encounter there? What are the sights, sounds, smells, social rituals there?
And then, in a final paragraph, I'd like you to imagine a fictional character who might find herself/himself there. I'm not asking for you to spin a whole plot for a film -- just describe a real place, and give a sense of who this fictional visitor to the place might be. We can let the rest of this "movie" play out in our own minds.
Recommended Reading/Viewing
A Varda overview:
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/varda/
Cleo and time:
http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/499-cleo-from-5-to-7-passionate-time
Cleo and Vagabond (this might be a good reference as a comparison of two films, the sort of thing you'll be doing for the midterm):
http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue09/reviews/varda/
A Varda-directed Black Panthers documentary (in french -- it can be seen in English at the mubi.com link below, for $1):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9136137543675766287#
A short film by Varda, Plaisirs d'amour en Iran:
http://www.ubu.com/film/varda_iran.html
Varda on Netflix instant view:
The Beaches of Agnes
Cinevardaphoto
The Gleaners and I
Cleo from 5 to 7
Varda on mubi.com (many of her more obscure films can be seen here, from $1 to $3 bucks a pop):
http://mubi.com/cast_members/1807
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