Today’s Google Doodle pays tribute to the extraordinary career of director Agnès Varda. She received an honorary lifetime achievement award from the European Film Academy today, in 2014.
Who is Agnès Varda?
Born in Belgium, French film director, screenwriter, photographer, and artist Agnès Varda. Her avant-garde work helped the French New Wave film movement expand in the 1950s and 1960s, affecting the international film industry. She wanted to maintain her experimental technique while addressing women’s issues, societal critique, and documentary realism.
Early life and education
Christiane (née Pasquet) and engineer Eugène Jean Varda had Arlette in Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium, on May 30, 1928. Her mother was from Sète, France, and her father was Greek from Asia Minor. Her family had five kids. After turning 18, Varda legally changed her name to Agnès.
After leaving Belgium, when she was a teenager, her family went to Sète in 1940. She and her family stayed aboard a boat there during WWII.
Varda studied art history at the École du Louvre and photography at the École des Beaux-Arts before joining the Théâtre National Populaire in Paris. Varda earned a bachelor’s degree in literature and psychology from the Sorbonne after attending the Lycée et collège Victor-Duruy. “Truly excruciating,” she claimed, recalling her relocation to Paris and “a frightful memory of my arrival in this gray, inhumane, sad city.” The Sorbonne classes were “stupid, antiquated, abstract, [and] scandalously unsuited for the lofty needs one had at that age,” and she didn’t get along with her classmates.
Career of Agnès Varda
Varda risked utilizing her images as film inspiration. Her 1955 debut film, “La Pointe Courte,” was one of these attempts. The film mixed fiction and documentary.
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Varda continued to direct independent films. She was unaffected by industry norms because she didn’t study filmmaking. Her independence helped her defy expectations and contribute to the French New Wave. As the only female New Wave filmmaker, she challenged traditional wisdom and introduced new ideas. In contrast to traditional filmmaking, the New Wave explored.
Photography career
After studying art history at the École du Louvre, Varda wanted to be a museum curator, but she chose photography at the Vaugirard School of Photography. Before becoming famous in Left Bank and French New Wave cinema, she was still a photographer. She said, “I take photographs or I make films,” lightly linking photography with film. I tried combining movies and graphics.”
Varda said, “I took cheap family and wedding photos to make money right away and started making a living from photography,” of her early still-life paintings. I was compelled to create “compositions” immediately. I felt like I was questioning structure, purpose, and order. Varda’s friend Jean Vilar was her official photographer for the Théâtre National Populaire’s debut in 1951. Before her employment, she was a stage photographer for the Avignon Theatre Festival. She worked at the Théâtre National Populaire from 1951 to 1961. She became a European photojournalist once her popularity grew.
Filmmaking career
Varda’s work resembles the French New Wave while being created before it. At 25, Varda, a photographer, admitted to having barely seen 20 films and knowing little about filmmaking. Still, she wanted to direct her own film. After drafting the script, I thought, “I’d like to shoot that script,” so I gathered some friends to make it happen. She later said she wrote her first script “in the same manner as someone writes their first book.”
Her photography was natural and feminine, but she found it difficult because it was less flexible than writing a novel. In an interview with The Believer, Varda described La Pointe Courte and said she wanted to make pictures that fit her time rather than follow traditions.
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