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https://www.telerama.fr/cinema/agnes-va ... 193362.php

Very devastating. I feel lucky to have seen her last year when she lectured at
the Harvard Film Archive. So full of joie de vivre. Sans toi ni loi and
Cleo de 7 a 5 are two films that remain formidable experiences.

I really loved her last film with JR. It looks like she had some great final years. Such a force

Honored to have met her. Just a wonderful soul.

I believe she was the last director to have directed a feature film prior to 1960. There are a number of directors still with us who directed TV and short films prior to 1960 but I can't think of anyone else who directed a feature film.

Though 90, I was a bit shocked because she recently had a film Varda by Agnes that played at the recent Berlin Film Festival.

Even with her incredibly long career, and extensive filmography, The Gleaners and I is the one that I most associate with her. Simply magical. A wonderful soul indeed.

She isn't my favorite out of the New Wave, but in my opinion she had a much more interesting career than almost all of her cohorts (I'd say only Godard has an interesting career like hers), and aside from creating some of my favorites both in the fiction/documentary and the feature/short templates, she always radiated such compassion, love and joy. She is probably the most humanistic director I can think of and I look forward to going through all the film's of her I have left.
Vagabond and The Beaches of Agnes are just brilliant, but honestly, aside from a few throwaway shorts I don't think she ever made a bad/boring film.

She always seemed so vigorous, playful and full of life. Hard to believe that cancer finally cut her down. I'll go watch "The Gleaners and I" and "The Beaches of Agnes" in tribute.

Nice that she was able to complete her swansong before passing. Her penultimate film was so full of life!

Aunt Peg wrote: Fri Mar 29, 2019 12:19 pm I believe she was the last director to have directed a feature film prior to 1960. There are a number of directors still with us who directed TV and short films prior to 1960 but I can't think of anyone else who directed a feature film.

I’m sure there are more, but Michel Deville off the top of my head

Also Franco Zeffirelli, Bert Gordon, Peter Brook, Roger Corman, Toshio Masuda, Monte Hellman...

And you kind of have to recognize Kenneth Anger as well, who worked exclusively in shorts, started making them 78 years ago, and still walks the earth!

...and Carlos Saura

Could we conduct the trivia game in another thread, perhaps?

She will be very much missed (and I sadly missed my chance of seeing her when she came to the Harvard Film Archive).

I was lucky enough to catch one of her two Harvard lectures in addition to seeing her NYFF Q&A for Faces Places. I run hot and cold on her films but she had such a beautiful spirit--a true artist's soul in the sense that she seemed to be insatiably hungry for new ways to express herself even into her eighties (whether through narrative features, shorts, documentaries, video installations, community art projects, etc.). I absolutely love that she was committed to making art-making a very local act that ordinary people can and should participate in.

She was also, with Chris Marker and Rivette, one of the great cat-loving filmmakers. This 2-minute homage to her beloved pet Zgougou (whom she shared with Jacques Demy in the last years of his life) is one of my favorite things she ever made.

She was good friend with JR who visited her quite often in her last 2 years. JR made her open an Instagram account on the shooting of Visages, Villages (Faces,Places). And made lots of videos with her posted as stories on his account.
She was an "artiste-total".

ianthemovie wrote: I absolutely love that she was committed to making art-making a very local act that ordinary people can and should participate in.

Which did become a bit tricky when she and JR did a Kickstarter-like campaign to fund Faces Places, despite both being well known artists that could very much have obtained regular fundings for the movie. They both got lambasted for this when it launched, though the movie itself was later very positively welcomed.

tenia wrote: Fri Mar 29, 2019 5:22 pm

ianthemovie wrote: I absolutely love that she was committed to making art-making a very local act that ordinary people can and should participate in.

Which did become a bit tricky when she and JR did a Kickstarter-like campaign to fund Faces Places, despite both being well known artists that could very much have obtained regular fundings for the movie.

Isn't that a huge assumption? We're not talking about Lucas and Spielberg.

aox wrote: Fri Mar 29, 2019 5:39 pm

tenia wrote: Fri Mar 29, 2019 5:22 pm

ianthemovie wrote: I absolutely love that she was committed to making art-making a very local act that ordinary people can and should participate in.

Which did become a bit tricky when she and JR did a Kickstarter-like campaign to fund Faces Places, despite both being well known artists that could very much have obtained regular fundings for the movie.

Isn't that a huge assumption? We're not talking about Lucas and Spielberg.

Spot on. Just to put it in perspective I know people here in New York who got their start with some high profile documentary filmmakers, and even with their name recognition, they couldn't raise enough grant money from foundations and the like to pay a decent salary for one person for one year, and we're talking about a documentary that would eventually take several years to finish. Given the type of films Varda wanted to make (personal essays, not agitprop or overt social issue films or salacious re-enactments, etc.) and probably her age (stylistically she's not considered en vogue the way certain doc filmmakers are nowadays), she was at a disadvantage when applying for the same grants God knows how many other filmmakers were applying for.

hearthesilence wrote: Fri Mar 29, 2019 5:55 pm

aox wrote: Fri Mar 29, 2019 5:39 pm

tenia wrote: Fri Mar 29, 2019 5:22 pm

Which did become a bit tricky when she and JR did a Kickstarter-like campaign to fund Faces Places, despite both being well known artists that could very much have obtained regular fundings for the movie.

Isn't that a huge assumption? We're not talking about Lucas and Spielberg.

Spot on. Just to put it in perspective I know people here in New York who got their start with some high profile documentary filmmakers, and even with their name recognition, they couldn't raise enough grant money from foundations and the like to pay a decent salary for one person for one year, and we're talking about a documentary that would eventually take several years to finish. Given the type of films Varda wanted to make (personal essays, not agitprop or overt social issue films or salacious re-enactments, etc.) and probably her age (stylistically she's not considered en vogue the way certain doc filmmakers are nowadays), she was at a disadvantage when applying for the same grants God knows how many other filmmakers were applying for.

My point was rather that she consistently (from her first feature La Pointe Courte through Visages villages) involved ordinary people (i.e., tradespeople, laborers, retirees) in the process of filmmaking and made them active participants in her cinema, the idea being that artistic expression is not something that needs to be limited to "professionals," and that films are collaborative efforts as opposed to being the products of a single individual. The subjects of her documentaries play an active role in sharing their own wishes about what they want to express, whether they are French villagers or Jane Birkin, and Varda works with them to realize these wishes. In her documentary about the making of Demy's Young Girls of Rochefort she credits the entire town of Rochefort and its residents as creative collaborators in the making of that film. I know of very few filmmakers who have used such a method.

Sans toi, Agnès video homage by Catherine Grant (2'19")

Re funding. It would be nigh on impossible using traditional finance to trigger production without full insurance in place . For a director in their late 80's on an extended journey and shooting schedule I doubt whether it would have been feasible.

hearthesilence wrote: Fri Mar 29, 2019 5:55 pm Spot on. Just to put it in perspective I know people here in New York who got their start with some high profile documentary filmmakers, and even with their name recognition, they couldn't raise enough grant money from foundations and the like to pay a decent salary for one person for one year, and we're talking about a documentary that would eventually take several years to finish. Given the type of films Varda wanted to make (personal essays, not agitprop or overt social issue films or salacious re-enactments, etc.) and probably her age (stylistically she's not considered en vogue the way certain doc filmmakers are nowadays), she was at a disadvantage when applying for the same grants God knows how many other filmmakers were applying for.

NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote: Fri Mar 29, 2019 8:23 pm Re funding. It would be nigh on impossible using traditional finance to trigger production without full insurance in place . For a director in their late 80's on an extended journey and shooting schedule I doubt whether it would have been feasible.

When they started the campaign, they actually already had received 250k€ grants from the CNC and various regional funds from the projected 300k€ budget (though they also mentioned the grants were spread across the whole shooting and post-prod period, which certainly isn't very practical). I don't know how movie production works, but with 83% of the budget already covered, I guess whatever needed trigger was already taken care of (I don't think the grants would have been wasted to a movie that couldn't be made).

Note also that the campaign marketed the movie as a 26 minutes project, so they were having trouble making a 26 min movie with 250k€, yet managed to do a 90 min one with only 50k€ more.
The main issue probably was that they phrased the campaign as if they needed money to go on holidays with a filming crew and had to get some extra money to pay the social taxes for their technicians. But in the meantime, Varda and JR posted a video of them meeting DeNiro during a NY trip. That didn't help.

This being written, it does, in a way, go with the idea of thoroughly involved ordinary people, up to the point of making actively finance the movie. There were no simple viewers anymore.

domino harvey wrote: Fri Mar 29, 2019 3:14 pm

Aunt Peg wrote: Fri Mar 29, 2019 12:19 pm I believe she was the last director to have directed a feature film prior to 1960. There are a number of directors still with us who directed TV and short films prior to 1960 but I can't think of anyone else who directed a feature film.

I’m sure there are more, but Michel Deville off the top of my head

I honestly thought Micel Deville had passed away sometime ago. I must have been getting him confused with Claude Miller.