Agnès Varda

Lions Love (. . . and Lies)

Lions Love (. . . and Lies)

Agnès Varda brings New York counterculture to Los Angeles. In a rented house in the sun-soaked Hollywood Hills, a woman and two men—Viva, of Warhol Factory fame, and James Rado and Gerome Ragni, who created and starred in the rock musical Hair—delight in one another’s bodies while musing on love, stardom, and politics. They are soon joined by underground director Shirley Clarke, playing herself as well as functioning as a surrogate for Varda. Lions Love (. . . and Lies) is a metacinematic inquiry into the alternating currents of whimsy and tragedy that typified late-sixties America.

Lions Love (. . . and Lies) was restored by the Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata in association with Ciné-Tamaris and The Film Foundation. Restoration funding provided by the Annenberg Foundation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and The Film Foundation.

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Film Info

  • France, United States
  • 1969
  • 112 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.66:1
  • English

Available In

Collector's Set

The Complete Films of Agnès Varda

The Complete Films of Agnès Varda

Blu-ray Box Set

15 Discs

$199.96

Collector's Set

Eclipse Series 43: Agnès Varda in California

Agnès Varda in California

DVD Box Set

3 Discs

$35.96

Lions Love (. . . and Lies)
Cast
Viva
Herself
James Rado
Jim
Gerome Ragni
Gerry
Shirley Clarke
Herself
Credits
Director
Agnès Varda
Written by
Agnès Varda
Produced by
Agnès Varda
Produced by
Max L. Raab
Camera
Stevan Larner
Camera
Lee Alexander
Sound
George Alch
Edited by
Robert Dalva
Music by
Joseph Byrd
Assistant
Lynn Littman

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Agnès Varda

Writer, Producer, Director

Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda

The only female director of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda has been called both the movement’s mother and its grandmother. The fact that some have felt the need to assign her a specifically feminine role, and the confusion over how to characterize that role, speak to just how unique her place in this hallowed cinematic movement—defined by such decidedly masculine artists as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut—is. Varda not only made films during the nouvelle vague, she helped inspire it. Her self-funded debut, the fiction-documentary hybrid 1956’s La Pointe Courte is often considered the unofficial first New Wave film; when she made it, she had no professional cinema training (her early work included painting, sculpting, and photojournalism). Though not widely seen, the film got her commissions to make several documentaries in the late fifties. In 1962, she released the seminal nouvelle vague film Cléo from 5 to 7; a bold character study that avoids psychologizing, it announced her official arrival. Over the coming decades, Varda became a force in art cinema, conceiving many of her films as political and feminist statements, and using a radical objectivity to create her unforgettable characters. She describes her style as cinécriture (writing on film), and it can be seen in formally audacious fictions like Le bonheur and Vagabond as well as more ragged and revealing autobiographical documentaries like The Gleaners and I and The Beaches of Agnès.

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