Agnès Varda

Documenteur

Documenteur

This small-scale fiction about a divorced mother and her child (played by Agnès Varda’s own son) leading a quiet existence on L.A.’s margins was made directly after Mur Murs, and though Documenteur is different in form and tone from that film, the two are complexly interwoven, with overlapping images and ideas. This meditative portrait of urban isolation overflows with subtle visual poetry.

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Film Info

  • France, United States
  • 1981
  • 64 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.66:1
  • French, 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

Documenteur
Cast
Sabine Mamou
Émilie Cooper
Mathieu Demy
Martin Cooper
Tom Taplin
Tom Cooper
Gary Feldman
Writer at the window
Lisa Blok-Linson
Lisa, the friend
Tina Odom
Tina, the waitress
Delphine Seyrig
Narrator
Credits
Director
Agnès Varda
Written by
Agnès Varda
Cinematography
Nurith Aviv
Sound
Jim Thornton
Sound
Lee Alexander
Edited by
Sabine Mamou
Music by
Georges Delerue

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Explore

Agnès Varda

Writer, 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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