A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda, is the book by award- winning film critic Carrie Rickey.
Rickey traces Varda’s three remarkable careers—as still photographer, as filmmaker, and as installation artist. She explains how Varda was a pioneer in blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, using the latest digital technology and carving a path for women in the movie industry. She demonstrates how Varda was years ahead of her time in addressing sexism, abortion, labor exploitation, immigrant rights, and race relations with candor and incisiveness. She makes clear Varda’s impact on contemporary figures like Ava DuVernay, Greta Gerwig, Barry Jenkins, the Safdie brothers, and Martin Scorsese, who called her one of the Gods of cinema. And she delves into Varda’s incredibly rich social life with figures such as Harrison Ford, Jean-Luc Godard, Jim Morrison, Susan Sontag, and Andy Warhol, and her nearly forty-year marriage to the celebrated director Jacques Demy.
Suchita talks to Carrie about this most important book on Agnes Varda who defined the French New Wave, inspired an entire generation of filmmakers, and was recognized with major awards at the Cannes, Berlin, and Venice Film Festivals, as well as an honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards.
Digs:
1) Varda and her relationships with other Artists. She got to the essence very fast. Her ability to connect with people as a photographer and storyteller was immemse.
2) Transforming from still image to moving pictures to 3 dimensional spaces- almost like a 3 Act of life!!
3) The approach as a filmmaker that was so distinct from her director husband Demy. Her approach was to discover deeper aspects of things.
4) Varda started making movies without knowing anything about movies- without having even have watched many films- and so she found her own language, her own grammar.
5) Opening up to arts, creativity and filmmaking to create a new syntax.
6) Truffaut's non acceptance of Varda as a director and his reviews in Cahiers du cinema.
7) A very imporant difference between the French and the American studios financing movies-
8) How photography taught her to capture the decisive moment!
9) 1958 when her film got into the Cannes festival was she accepted into the community of french filmmakers and new wave filmmakers?
10) The long marriage to another brilliant filmmaker Demy
11) Varda's relationship with Jim Morrison and his death- and how his funeral was for less than 8 minutes!
12) Varda with Warhol, Susan Sontag, Truffaut.
13) Scorses's immense admiration for Varda.
Enjoy this longish episode, and check out the book that is out now !!
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