Agnès Varda

The Beaches of Agnès

The Beaches of Agnès

“If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes. If we opened me up, we’d find beaches.” Originally intended to be Agnès Varda’s farewell to filmmaking, this enchanting auto-portrait, made in her eightieth year, is a freewheeling journey through her life, career, and artistic philosophy. Revisiting the places that shaped her—from the North Sea beaches of Belgium where she spent her childhood to the Mediterranean village where she shot her first film to the boardwalks of Los Angeles where she lived with her husband, Jacques Demy—Varda reflects on a lifetime of creation and inspiration, successes and setbacks, heartbreak and joy. Replete with images of wonder and whimsy—the ocean reflected in a kaleidoscope of mirrors, the streets of Paris transformed into a sandy beach, the filmmaker herself ensconced in the belly of a whale—The Beaches of Agnès is a playful and poignant record of a life lived fully and passionately in the name of cinema.

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Film Info

  • France
  • 2008
  • 112 minutes
  • Black and White/Color
  • 1.85:1, 1.37:1, 1.66:1
  • French

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

The Beaches of Agnès
Credits
Director
Agnès Varda
First sequence codirected by
Agnès Varda
First sequence codirected by
Didier Rouget
Varda’s right hand
Rosalie Varda
Director of production
Cecilia Rose
Cinematography by
Alain Sakot
Cinematography by
Hélène Louvart
Cinematography by
Arlene Nelson
Cinematography by
Julia Fabry
Cinematography by
Jean-Baptiste Morin
Cinematography by
Agnès Varda
Sound
Pierre Mertens
Sound
Olivier Schwob
Sound
Frédéric Maury
Music by
Joanna Bruzdowicz
Music by
Stéphane Vilar
Music by
Paule Cornet
Set design by
Franckie Diago
Edited by
Agnès Varda
Edited by
Baptiste Filloux
Edited by
Jean-Baptiste Morin
First assistant
Julia Fabry

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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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