Agnes Varda

Agnès Varda – Life, Career, and Famous Quotes

Discover the life and legacy of Agnès Varda: her journey from photographer to iconic French filmmaker, her unique vision, feminist spirit, and most memorable quotes.

Introduction

Agnès Varda (May 30, 1928 – March 29, 2019) remains one of the most singular and influential voices in modern cinema. Though born in Belgium, she became a French film director, screenwriter, editor, producer, photographer, and visual artist. Over a career spanning more than six decades, Varda bridged documentary and fiction, intertwining personal memory, social commentary, and poetic form. Often called the “grandmother of the French New Wave,” she never fully belonged to any school — she made her cinema on her own terms.

Her films speak to the intimate and the political, the everyday and the extraordinary. She continually explored how we see and are seen, often giving voice to forgotten people and places. Even today, her work inspires filmmakers, artists, feminists, and seekers of visual poetry.

Early Life and Family

Agnès Varda was born Arlette Varda on May 30, 1928, in Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium.

In 1940, as World War II escalated, her family left Belgium and settled in Sète in southern France, where they lived partly aboard a boat. The experience of displacement, migration, and ever-shifting borders left a lasting imprint on her sensibility.

At age 18, she legally changed her name from Arlette to Agnès. Her name change was partly symbolic of a new identity and creative rebirth.

Youth and Education

After relocating to France, Varda pursued her education in Paris. She studied art history at the École du Louvre and photography at the École des Beaux-Arts (Vaugirard).

Her initial ambitions leaned toward museum curation and art history, but she soon gravitated toward photography. She began working as a photographer for theatrical productions and festivals, including with the Théâtre National Populaire from 1951 to 1961.

Photography shaped her visual sensibility: the careful framing, the attention to surfaces, the poetic gaze. She used photographic techniques to plan her early films. She later said that before filming La Pointe Courte, she photographed each intended shot as if it were a still image.

Career and Achievements

Break into Cinema & Early Works

Varda’s first feature film, La Pointe Courte (1954/1955), was made with minimal budget, non-professional actors, and a hybrid approach between fiction and documentary.

One of her most celebrated narrative works is Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962), which follows a singer awaiting medical test results in near real time. It blends existential anxiety with city life in Paris.

In the 1960s, Varda experimented with documentary, political cinema, and feminist themes. She made short films like Black Panthers (1968) exploring U.S. social movements. Lions Love during her time in Los Angeles.

Her style, which she described as “cinécriture” (cinematic writing), rejects rigid separation between director, writer, cinematographer, and editor — she allowed all elements of film to speak, layer meaning, and evolve organically during editing.

Mature Period and Documentary Voice

In 1975 she founded her own production company, Ciné-Tamaris, which allowed her more freedom and control. Varda pushed more into documentary and hybrid forms in later decades.

One major turning point came with Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (The Gleaners and I, 2000), where she reflects on gleaners, waste, time, aging, and visual scavenging. Les Plages d’Agnès (The Beaches of Agnès, 2008) is a deeply personal memoir-film that revisits places she lived and loved.

In the 2010s, she collaborated with artist JR in Visages, Villages (Faces Places, 2017). The film won L’Œil d’Or at Cannes and earned her an Academy Award nomination — at age 89, she became the oldest person ever nominated for a competitive Oscar.

Her final on-screen work was Varda by Agnès (2019), a self-reflective documentary series in which she watches and discusses her own films and life, emphasizing three pillars: inspiration, creation, and sharing.

Awards & Recognition

Varda’s honors are extraordinary in their breadth. She received:

• Honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2015, the first female director to do so.

• A Golden Lion at Venice for Vagabond (1985).

• An Academy Honorary Award (Oscar) in 2017 for her lifetime achievement.

• Multiple César Awards in France.

• She was a jury member at both Cannes (2005) and Venice (1983).

Martin Scorsese described her as “one of the Gods of Cinema.”

Historical Milestones & Context

Varda’s film career began just before or alongside the early years of the French New Wave (La Nouvelle Vague), but she never completely merged into its dominant narrative. Instead, her films ran in parallel, often more meditative, personal, and formally experimental.

Her move into documentary and hybrid forms aligned with global shifts in cinema: the rise of personal cinema, the breakdown of strict genre boundaries, the increasing voice of women filmmakers, and the growing interest in memory, identity, and marginality.

Politically, Varda operated at key cultural moments: the feminist movement in France, the debates over reproductive rights (she signed the Manifesto of the 343 in 1971, admitting to having an abortion when it was illegal)

As she aged, she continued producing work — resisting assumptions that creativity must diminish with age. Her acknowledgment of aging, mortality, and the urgency of seeing became thematic pillars.

Legacy and Influence

A few lasting legacies of Agnès Varda:

1. Pioneer for women in cinema — she opened pathways, insisted on autonomous creation, and inspired generations of female directors.

2. Hybrid nonfiction/fiction form — her approach to documentary and narrative blurred boundaries, influencing documentary filmmakers who seek poetic and reflexive modes.

3. Poetic gaze on the everyday — she elevated small gestures, overlooked people, and degraded spaces into images of wonder and empathy.

4. Cinematic memory and self-reflection — The Beaches of Agnès and Varda by Agnès model how artists can revisit memory and life through film.

5. Endless curiosity — until near the end of her life, she remained active, inventive, and playful, proving that an artist never retires.

Institutions worldwide regularly stage retrospectives of her work, and young filmmakers quote her. Her phrase “If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes” circulates as a testament to her view of human interiority merging with external worlds.

Personality and Talents

Varda was often described as warm, mischievous, fearless, and generous. She wore her age and experiences lightly, with humor and frankness. In interviews, she spoke of abrupt impulses, playful experiments, and a refusal to follow formula.

Her hobby of drinking rosemary tea was more than quirkiness — she called it her “speed”: “People take coffee, they take speed… I take rosemary.” She loved working in intimacy — small cameras, close collaborations, hybrid installations.

Varda also embraced roles beyond director: photographer, installation artist, collagist, and public intellectual. She never stopped exploring new media and modes of expression.

Famous Quotes of Agnès Varda

Below are some of her most resonant sayings:

• “If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes.”

• “The first feminist gesture is to say: ‘OK, they’re looking at me. But I’m looking at them.’ The act of deciding to look, of deciding that the world is not defined by how people see me, but how I see them.”

• “Whatever your brilliance, your pessimism, your thoughts about existence, the answer is always … Life.”

• “I live in cinema. I feel I’ve lived here forever.”

• “I’m not interested in seeing a film just made by a woman — not unless she is looking for new images.”

• “My mind is often half-sleeping, like in a daydream.”

• “Good cinema is good cinema. It makes you feel like you need to work.”

• “When artists die early, they become idols even more.”

These lines capture her dual commitment: to seeing, and to being seen; to the poetic and to the political.

Lessons from Agnès Varda

• Make art on your terms. Varda never subordinated her voice to fashion or industry expectations.

• Blend life and art. Her films often grew from her own memories, everyday observations, and migratory life.

• Be curious forever. Even when older, she embraced new media and collaborations.

• See the humble. She taught us to notice the gleaners, the alleys, the marginal lives, the traces of time.

• Embrace contradiction. Her films show that life is messy, overlapping, nonlinear — and that tension is fertile.

Conclusion

Agnès Varda was more than a pioneer of French cinema — she was a poet of images, a seer of small truths, a feminist voice, and an artist with a restless heart. Her legacy endures not only in her landmark films, but in the way she taught us to look — at people, places, and our own selves — with tenderness, astonishment, and curiosity.

If you’re inspired, explore The Gleaners and I, The Beaches of Agnès, Faces Places, and beyond. And let her words remind you: even in small gestures, there lies a landscape.