Agnès Varda has been called the “grandmother of the Nouvelle Vague” – a decorative title that initially amused the filmmaker, as she said in a 2018 interview with the Guardian: “I found it funny because I was only 30 years old old was”. It is undisputed that Varda, born in Belgium in 1928 as the daughter of a French mother and a Greek father, became one of the defining characters of French film.
She owes her nickname to her first film as a director, “La Pointe Courte” from 1955. According to reviews, the film had an unpolished and novel narrative style and is now considered a forerunner of the Nouvelle Vague movement (German: New Wave). whose grandmother Agnès was chosen. Before her debut, Varda worked as a photographer and also studied art history.
She always remained true to her radical approach, as she told the Guardian: “When I was young, a new way of writing was being invented – by James Joyce, Hemingway, Faulkner. And I thought, we need a structure for that in the cinema I fought for radical cinema and continued to do so throughout my life.” She cited reality as the greatest inspiration for her work, and she also enjoys making films with “ordinary people”.
Agnès Varda was active as a filmmaker for 60 years; other works included “Cleo – Wednesday between 5 and 7” and “Vogelfrei”. She has been awarded numerous prizes. In 2018, she was crowned with the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Her documentary film “Varda at Agnès” was shown out of competition at the Berlinale in 2019, where she received the Berlinale Camera Honorary Award. On March 29 of the same year, Agnès Varda died of cancer in Paris at the age of 90. Martin Scorsese, himself a legendary director, posthumously called her “one of the goddesses” of the film world.
Agnès Varda was married to the French actor Jacques Demy from 1962 until his death in 1990. The couple had a son together, and Varda also brought a daughter from a previous relationship into the marriage.
Sources: Guardian, Hollywood Reporter, Britannica
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