Tag: Agnès Varda

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Lost in the Mail: Chris’s 2022 Sight and Sound Ballot

What’s in a list, anyway?

It’s something I’ve struggled with throughout my time as an online writer. But when you’re considering a set list of, as the BFI so brazenly puts it, the greatest films of all time, it becomes apparent that a list – any list – must encompass both a sense of inflexibility as well as transience. That’s what makes the Sight and Sound list so important, both in its cadence (the poll is only held once a decade) and its content. Our first episode of the new year has Jon and I catching up on our blind spots based on the most recent results, and it raised an important point about the nature of the list. Moreso than a canon of the greatest films ever made, it’s a sign o’ the times, to quote another legend who had their pulse on the shape of an art form over multiple decades. The changes in this year’s list reflects a broadening of critics who bring a level of diversity that reveals shifting viewpoints in cinema, and acts to push against the walls of an establishment that has held them back for decades. It’s a welcome shakeup to my mind, and it’s helped me to reconsider my own personal canon and question the biases that informed its creation.

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Varda by Jon – Part 15: Beaches

In the distant past of April 2020, Chris and I dove deep into an episode of our podcast Cinema Dual on the films of French filmmaker Agnès Varda. Though technically not my first experience with Varda, that week of watching Varda’s movies was eye-opening, to such an extent that when Criterion announced they were going to release a Blu Ray box set of her complete filmography, I jumped at the chance to catch up on everything I had missed. Each post will cover 1 of the 15 discs in the set.

In the intro to Part 12 of this series, having just seen the trailer for The Matrix: Resurrections, I asked what it meant for Lana Wachowski to return to that series. The answer, explicitly stated in the film, was that Warner Bros was going to make another Matrix with or without her, and under those conditions, Wachowski signed on. I’m almost completely sure that no one was threatening Agnès Varda to make her own biopic without her involvement, but the first thing she clearly states at the beginning of The Beaches of Agnès (2008), is that she is playing a role of a person telling her own life story, but that it’s other people that interest her. The challenge of the project becomes how to reconcile these competing impulses.

The Beaches of Agnès (2008) - IMDb
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Varda by Jon – Part 14: Here and There

In the distant past of April 2020, Chris and I dove deep into an episode of our podcast Cinema Dual on the films of French filmmaker Agnès Varda. Though technically not my first experience with Varda, that week of watching Varda’s movies was eye-opening, to such an extent that when Criterion announced they were going to release a Blu Ray box set of her complete filmography, I jumped at the chance to catch up on everything I had missed. Each post will cover 1 of the 15 discs in the set.

In 2010, Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal released a documentary called Exporting Raymond, which chronicled his adventures in Russia trying to break through cultural barriers while adapting his show for a new country. Though its success largely depended on you being in any way invested in the original source material, in the margins of the movie were little scenes of Phil trying out local food, showcasing Rosenthal’s harmless goofball nature. Years later someone would make the call that sending that goofball to different food spots around the world would make for generally pleasant televison, and they were right. Somebody Feed Phil (and its predecessor I’ll Have What Phil’s Having) is a gentle, comforting show featuring good food and Phil cracking terrible dad jokes. In the year of our Lord 2021, what more could you want?

Agnès Varda: From Here to There (TV Series 2011-2011) — The Movie Database (TMDB)
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Varda by Jon – Part 13: Visual Artist

In the distant past of April 2020, Chris and I dove deep into an episode of our podcast Cinema Dual on the films of French filmmaker Agnès Varda. Though technically not my first experience with Varda, that week of watching Varda’s movies was eye-opening, to such an extent that when Criterion announced they were going to release a Blu Ray box set of her complete filmography, I jumped at the chance to catch up on everything I had missed. Each post will cover 1 of the 15 discs in the set.

While this series has focused on the films of Agnès Varda, it’s reductive to describe her only as a filmmaker. Her career in photography predates her filmmaking career, and helps to inform her earliest film work, from the shots of the couple in La Pointe Courte to the contrasting images of a pregnant woman next to a pumpkin being hacked open in L’opéra-Mouffe. Likewise, her film work also informs her other artistic endeavors. In 2006, Varda reused film stock from Les Creatures, one of her less commercially successful films, to create the installation Ma Cabane de l’Échec (My Shack of Failure).  A cursory glance at Varda’s work will show a specific eye towards visual details, which while not always pre-planned, always end up becoming incorporated into the final product.

As a creator of art, Varda has her instincts. As an interpreter of art, those instincts change over time.

Watch Salut les cubains | Prime Video
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Varda by Jon – Part 12: La Glaneuse

In the distant past of April 2020, Chris and I dove deep into an episode of our podcast Cinema Dual on the films of French filmmaker Agnès Varda. Though technically not my first experience with Varda, that week of watching Varda’s movies was eye-opening, to such an extent that when Criterion announced they were going to release a Blu Ray box set of her complete filmography, I jumped at the chance to catch up on everything I had missed. Each post will cover 1 of the 15 discs in the set.

At the time I wrote this, the first trailer for The Matrix Resurrections had just been released. I don’t care to speculate on plot details or the film’s ultimate quality, but I am interested in the ways the filmmakers reflect and reinterpret the franchise with almost 18 years of hindsight and growth. It seems to have at least some bearing on the plot, as Neo and Trinity struggle to remember their past together, but may also have stronger implications on the film as a whole. What does it mean for Lana Wachowski to go back to this particular subject matter now? And what did it mean for Agnès Varda to do the same with our next film?

The Gleaners & I 2001 U.S. One Sheet Poster - Posteritati Movie Poster Gallery
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Varda by Jon – Part 11: Simon Cinéma

In the distant past of April 2020, Chris and I dove deep into an episode of our podcast Cinema Dual on the films of French filmmaker Agnès Varda. Though technically not my first experience with Varda, that week of watching Varda’s movies was eye-opening, to such an extent that when Criterion announced they were going to release a Blu Ray box set of her complete filmography, I jumped at the chance to catch up on everything I had missed. Each post will cover 1 of the 15 discs in the set.

If I had to boil down my renewed interest in movies (going on 10 years at this point) to one thing, it would be the realization that the history of movies is broader than I ever imagined. There are so many movements and trends filtered back and forth across cultures and time periods it’s unlikely I could ever reach the end of movies. I think the best moments on Cinema Dual tend to be when Chris and I find a film that make one of both of us just a little too giddy to coherently talk about it. And while the recent(ish) trend of trying to assert the supreme importance of and unhealthy attachment to a particular work of art has exposed the bankruptcy of fandom in recent years, there’s nothing wrong with celebrating the joy in something you like.

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