VARDA PAR AGNES

France, 2019, 115 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Agnes Varda.

At the age of 90, photographer and director, Agnes Varda, participated in an illustrated lecture for an audience as well as opening it out to a documentary overview of her long and prolific career.

She is a genial presence, short and a little stout, multi-colours in her hair. And she speaks with some affection to the audience – but is not afraid to be a bit sharp in her comments.

The film takes us back to her early years and upbringing, her becoming a photographer with some success. In the late 1950s and into the early 1960s, she became involved with a variety of directors, many of those contributing to the French New Wave. She became a photographer for some of them, including Jean-Luc? Godard.

While the film shows her work for other directors, it also concentrates on the films that she made, some features, some documentaries. There is her personal analysis of her celebrated first fiction film, Cleo from 5 to 7. However, there are many more clips from her variety of documentaries over the decades as well as her detailed explanation of why she was interested in documentary, observant in details, concerned about the people who were the subject of her films.

She was also devoted to her director-husband, Jacques Demy, working with him in his films, travelling to California when he had worked there, tending him during his illness, devoted to her children.

This is an interesting and entertaining documentary, an introduction to Agnes herself, a retrospective on her life and work, a perspective on her various films and her approach to photography and film-making.