Agnès Varda Retrospective

The French filmmaker, photographer and installation artist Agnès Varda (*1928) is a solitary figure in Europe's cinema landscape. With her debut film LA POINTE COURTE from 1954, she signaled the renewal of French cinema long before the Nouvelle Vague emerged. Since then, she has repeatedly invented herself anew, and until today enriches cinema's artistic forms of expression with her imaginativeness, curiosity and courageousness.

Arsenal dedicates an integral retrospective to Agnès Varda comprising all of her (close to) 40 films from 1954 to 2008: feature films, documentaries and essays, long and short films, playful and committed, personal and political, with laypersons and stars. From the very beginning, Varda has crossed the borders of genre categories and with her idiosyncratic, experimental style created new essayistic forms and an oeuvre situated between documentary realism and poetic fiction. We are especially delighted to greet Agnès Varda as our guest at Arsenal for three days, thanks to the support of the French Embassy. The retrospective will be opened on September 4 in her presence with LES PLAGES D'AGNÈS (F 2008), Varda's autobiographical film essay on her life and work.