Agnès Varda
Picture the scene: a hotel in Paris with journalists forming a small row in front of a glass table, which itself sits in front of an oversized sofa. There are young people with asymmetric haircuts stood in the door pressing on an earpiece and speaking into a microphone. They look like the Dalston FBI. There is a frisson of panic the air. It seems that their star attraction has gone missing. Maybe she took a wrong turn down one of the many snaking corridors in this maze-like hotel? Or maybe, more likely, she just decided to sack off her schedule and go her own way? Eventually, Agnès Varda, 89 at the time of writing, enters the room – she possesses the air of an eccentric royal figurehead from a make-believe country.
She jokes about how she’s never been commercially successful as a filmmaker, but if this is true, it’s because her films are cheerily nonconformist – the world has yet to catch up to her. Glancing back, her bitterly ironic take on adultery, , the delightful documentary portrait of her own street, , Venice Golden Lion winner and her heartbreaking, ramshackle ode to France’s working classes, . Her new film, , sits cosily within her personal canon of greats, a tour around France in the company of conceptual photographer JR to explore the relationship between art and landscape. What follows is an unprompted monologue delivered by Varda upon entering the room.
