CITY 46, Bremen: Network Agnès Varda: 
Essayisms, Feminisms, Modernisms

29th International Bremen Film Symposium  

Agnès Varda (1928–2019) was an extraordinarily creative and productive personality: for over six decades, she expanded cinema’s possibilities for artistic expression, helping pave the way for modern film. Her films and photographs testify to a highly personal signature that shows a joy in experimentation, shifting between documentary realism and poetic fiction. At the age of over 70, Varda began a third career: as an installation artist. The motif of the network emerges almost organically from Varda’s work, which is characterized by how she combines her modernist affinities with her feministic concerns and essayistic approaches.  With this in mind, the 29^th Bremen Film Symposium looks beyond just the auteur and her work to examine the social and aesthetic structures within which Varda was active and her collaborations and relationships. The film program both includes a selection of her films and forge connections to the work of other filmmakers. It is flanked by a panel discussion with production researcher Dennis Göttel (Berlin) and filmmaker Eva Knopf (Bremen) about historical and contemporary modes of film production as a form of manufacture in keeping with Varda’s own methods of film production.

The academic program brings together lectures from Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Turkey and the US. In her opening lecture, Christa Blümlinger (Paris) talks about Varda’s creative interplay between film, photography and installation art. Varda’s cinécriture is understood as the collection, reflection and association of materials, images and stories. In this context, Linda Waack (Zurich) speaks about Varda’s “using up leftovers” as a creative and political practice, while Bettina Henzler (Cologne) speaks about the playful moment as a gesture of female authorship. Stefan Drees (Berlin) also shines a light on Varda’s use of music as a specific aspect of cinécriture, In addition, Friederike Horstmann (Berlin) engages with Varda’s “autoportraits” from an art historical perspective and Dennis Göttel (Berlin) explores Varda’s critique of the separation of the areas of production and reproduction. The conclusion is formed by the lecture by Bernhard Groß (Jena) on the self-reflexive New York interviews that Varda conducted with Pier Paolo Pasolini. These and additional lectures that conduct specific individual analyses emphasize how the essayistic, feminist and modernist traits of Varda’s oeuvre are mutually dependent and cannot be conceived of separately from one another. (Tobias Dietrich)

The Bremen Film Symposium is a longstanding cooperation between the CITY 46/Kommunalkino Bremen e.V. and the Universität Bremen/ZeMKI (Film Studies, FB 9, and the History of Latin America, FB 8) with new collaborations each time: for the 29^th edition with Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V., Berlin. It is funded by nordmedia – Film- und Mediengesellschaft Niedersachsen/Bremen mbH and the DFG and supported by the  Instituto Cervantes Bremen and the Institut français Deutschland.