At the end of September, in the ancient town of Anren, Chengdu, "Listen to Varda" was screened as the closing film of the 3rd Shanyi International Women's Film Festival.
In the early autumn after the drizzle in the southwest town, the air was cool and humid. On the big screen, the 90-year-old Varda kept her iconic short hair and dressed in a highly photographed red shirt, looking at the camera to audiences around the world. Dao Lai's life accompanied by movies.
This may be the most beautiful choice in the film list of this exhibition. The romance and touch at that time still have a lot of enthusiasm today. From the rough and stubborn reality in the opening film "Spring Tide" to Varda's disappearance in the wind and sand on the seashore, the cruel and poetic nature of the film shows the fate of women in reality and the infinite creativity of female filmmakers.
This is a dream about film created by the small and beautiful film festival of Yamaichi. Here, female filmmakers use their intuition and keenness to record the softness and strength of women, allowing the public to re-understand the times, images and women’s relationship.
Varda, who is known as the "New Wave Grandmother", uses her forever girly state, her sensitivity and care to people around her, and her absolute professionalism and talent for film and art to interpret a female filmmaker and female artist. The most perfect look.
"Listen to Varda" is Varda's last film to be released. It premiered at the Berlin Film Festival on February 13 this year. On March 29, ten days after its release in France, Varda left us.
The film is also known as "Agnès on Varda". Agnès is the first name and Varda is the last name. In addition to self-writing, directing and acting, this is a completely detailed director's explanation, a farewell to the world, one The suicide note written to myself. It seems that she has long been aware of death. The
film is a wonderful compilation of Varda’s many lectures, including CC disc interview selections and creation records, as well as Varda’s creation and design. This is a dry master class. You don't even have to watch every one of her films, but you will immediately have the urge to make up all of her films after watching this one.
She talked about the original intention of creation, the motivation she has always insisted on, and the birth moments of those fantastic ideas. Facing the world, she is perceptual, but she can always use images, photography, painting and installation art to express those in trouble, so that people can truly realize what the disease of the times is.
Varda's life in creating movies, we can hardly say whether the movie continues to give her charm, or her vigorous vitality is creating a classic movie.
Besides these, Varda's childlike innocence, calmness, curiosity, care and love for the world, people should feel lucky to know such a petite, humorous, self-deprecating, cute little woman with a smile on her face.
Inspiration, creation, sharing
In the film, what Varda talks about is almost all focused sharing for film and television creators.
She put forward the concept of "film writing", "it covers all the choices in the film production process, what you shoot, smooth shots or obtrusive shots, clear, isolated images, or in a crowded space, whether there is scheduling , With or without the soundtrack, everything takes shape in the editing room. I sometimes add comments because I want to stay in the film and be with the audience, but in the editing and mixing, we have completed the "movie writing". "
and frankly shared three key words that have led her to continue making movies for many years:
inspiration: the reason for making movies. What kind of motives, thoughts, environment, and what kind of accidents have ignited your desire to make movies.
creation: the way to make movies. What method is used, what structure, independent creation or co-creation, color or black and white, creation is a work process.
Sharing: Making movies is not to watch them alone, making movies is to show them, and watching movies is an example of sharing. In the follow-up sharing of
, she cited 21 examples to clarify how these three words play a role in her work.
Varda was a photographer in the first stage of her career. Since the 1950s, she took pictures for the Avignon Theatre Festival and the French National Theater. These photos include celebrities, drama actors, her neighbors, passersby, and elementary school students in faraway China.
In 1955, she wrote and directed her debut short film "Short"Angel Love" appeared in Cannes, the film is regarded as the forerunner of the new wave of French cinema.
"I was inexperienced when I made this movie. I never went to film school or worked as an assistant director. This movie was born like that, I don't know where it came from." Although Varda said it seems casual , But in fact she is very clear about what she wants.
In the film, Varda photographed the village of Short Cape, where she grew up. Varda said that she likes to be close to reality, and the artistic expression of reality. For her debut work, choosing where to grow up fits her creative philosophy. This is the starting point for expressing desire, that is, inspiration.
and Faulkner's "Wild Palm" inspired her and gave her the structure of the film. She alternately mixed two stories with nothing in common in one movie. That is creation.
Regarding sharing, in this short film, she broke the tradition, letting the characters walk into the depths of the screen, the voice is still placed in the foreground, rather than weakened as the characters go away. This is her creation and a new way of communication that will refresh the audience.
In Varda's film examples, there are too many descriptions about the moment of inspiration, but one thing can be found in common, that is, they all come from Varda's keenness of the times and concern for people.
, such as one of Varda’s most famous films, "Cleo at 5 to 7 o'clock" (1962), was inspired by two conditions. In the 1960s, people’s collective fear was cancer, so she wanted to shoot a worry A female singer who suffered from cancer. On the other hand, the difficulty in reality is that they have limited funds and can only make a low-cost movie.
So Varda thought of "shorten the time" in his mind, "I can shoot an hour and a half of her life, like the length of a movie, I really follow Cleo, from 5 pm to 6 pm It's half past one."
So the image of the fear of the times and the expression of the ancient question of subjective and objective time are delicately completed in one film.
1969's "Lion, Love, Lies" focused on hippies, and brought in the representatives of the hippie era, Rado and Rani, and Andy Warhol's queen actress Viva. The actors brought a lot of improvisation. This is a utopian story, but at the same time, the existence of another important role-the TV, reflects the spirit, sex and politics of the whole movie (the Kennedy is being broadcast on TV) News of his death).
"Lions, Love, Lies" stills
's later "One Sings, One Does Not Sing" (1977) focused on the feminist movement that began to prevail in the United States in the 1960s. Varda has always been a feminist, and she is especially concerned about the struggle for female physical freedom. This is a film about the friendship between women and the struggle of women in groups.
Entering the 1980s, Varda found that "on the road" became a trend, so there was a story about an angry and lonely girl-"A Fallen Girl at the End of the World" (1985).
also has some inspiration from Varda's daily preferences and communication with others. In 1965, "Happiness" was inspired by impressionist paintings, in which Varda played with colors and explored family ethics and the essence of marriage.
"Happiness" stills
The filming plan for "A Thousand Faces Treasure Gold" in 1988 came from a walk with her friend Jane Birkin.
Jane Birkin: Too bad, I will be 40 years old soon.
Varda: Don't be silly, isn't it a good time? Just in time to take your portrait. The
movie started like this, they broke the fourth wall, Jane had to look at the camera, and Varda behind the camera would occasionally appear in the shot.
"A Thousand Faces Treasure Gold" stills
When the film was born a century ago, Varda was invited to shoot a theme film "101 Nights". In this film, Varda tried his best to gather many stars, including Deneuve and De Niro, put them on a boat, and let De Niro (the stand-in) fall into the water, but Varda's film It also fell and suffered heavy losses.
After that, Varda never used 35mm and 16mm film to shoot feature films, and the arrival of the 21st century gave her a new "toy"-a small digital camera. The art form of video has become more broad. Since then, she has played with documentaries, artistic videos and installation art.
Real people have always been the core of my creation
"Gleaners" is Varda's first feature film (documentary) in the new millennium. The film is inspired by Miller's famous painting "Gleaners" and records French scavengers. The small camera helped Varda a lot, and its size kept it from frightening the subject.
During this process, Varda found a heart-shaped potato from the scavenger. "The heart shape represents tenderness, love, and is powerful. It inspires us to approach scavengers with emotion. Those heart-shaped potatoes have inspired me. I wait for them to grow old and sprout, and wait for them to shrink. Nevertheless, they pass Germ and fibrous roots have new life."
These discarded "unqualified" potatoes became an exhibit of the 2003 Venice Biennale-"Potato Utopia", and formally contrasted 15 and 16 The triptych of the century pays tribute. As a result, Varda entered the ranks of "visual artists".
Because of her fascination with triptych, she later created the art video "Nomotier's Triptych". From this, I got acquainted with Elvi Chandice, the president of the Cartier Contemporary Art Foundation, and began to cooperate with him.
At this time, Varda created "Island and Her" and started to build her own cabin with 9 rolls of 3,500 meters long film shelved in the basement.
In 2018, she used film from the movie "Happiness" to build No. 3 Cinema House at the Obadiah Art Museum. Since "Gleaners", Varda has been recycling, reusing them in an "artistic form", giving them another life, making them double-meaning works of art, as are discarded films.
In 1990, Varda's husband, the famous French director Jacques Demi, passed away. Varda photographed "Jacques Demi of Nantes" for him when he was seriously ill. In 2006, she filmed "The Widows of Noamoutier", an island with many widows. Varda has the same identity as them and gained their trust.
There are 15 images in total. In the big screen in the middle, widows dressed in black are circling around a table. This video is surrounded by small videos of 14 widows speaking alone. There are 14 chairs in the exhibition hall, and only one small is played in each earphone. The sound of the video is dubbed in Swedish, English, Spanish, and even Chinese.
Everyone saw the same picture, but heard different narrations, which changed the way the image communicates with the audience. "This is a way of combining privacy and collective. When every widow tells this to one person, one can see the words of the ladies of Noamoutier and find a listener so far away from their home. "
Varda believes that art transcends different cultural backgrounds, countries, ethnicities, religions and ages. The 90-year-old Varda no longer cares about age, but Varda ten years ago, she also felt anxious.
"The number 80 feels like the front of a train is speeding towards me. I have to accomplish something when I am 80 years old, so I devoted myself to a movie project and said to myself "Hurry up and shoot", it will be A self-portrait, a story about my journey." So there was "Agnès Beach."
She took a picture of herself holding a sign parade. The sign said "I am full of pain". She laughed at herself and said that this sign was always applicable.
Varda said that real people have always been the core of her work, and facing the subjects, she thinks that nothing is ordinary. If we have empathy and love for the subjects, we will find them special. So she and urban photographer JR completed "Faces, Villages", turning those real faces into huge pictures on the wall.
"Face, Village" stills
Varda has been living close to the sea since she was born, she loves the sea. "When telling my story, I think if we'open' some people, we will find some scenery, if people'open' me, we will find a beach."
she also said, "the sea is always right, and "Wind and sand", and "movie is not to make time stand still, but to coexist with time".
FIN
