Agnès Varda b. 30 May, 1928 d. 29 March, 2019
Varda was born Arlette Varda to Greek and French parents living in Belgium. She is the first cousin once removed of the painter Jean Varda who was the subject of her 1967 documentary Uncle Yanco.
In 1954, eschewing the more conventional career path of camera assistant working their way up to director, Varda shot her first film La Pointe-courte. The film was screened at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival and is considered a precursor to the French New Wave film movement.
Her 1962 film Cléo de 5 à 7 competed for the Palme d’or at the Cannes Film Festival. For her 1965 film Le Bonheur, Varda won the Prix du jury at the Berlin Film Festival.
By 1962 Varda married fellow filmmaker Jacques Demy. The two were supportive of each other’s careers and Varda did various uncredited work behind the scenes of her husband’s films. From the late 1960s to the early ‘80s Varda, along with Demy, would move to Los Angeles where Varda would make a series of independent shorts, documentaries, and feature films set in California.
Varda was also an abortion rights activist. In 1971 she was one of 343 women including actresses Catherine Deneuve and Anne Wiazemsky, designer Sonia Rykiel, and writer and filmmaker Marguerite Dumas, who publicly admitted to having abortions despite the fact that abortion was illegal in France during that time. She would later make a feature film about the abortion and women’s rights movements in France called One Sings, the Other Doesn’t which was released in 1977.
She recieved her first, and only, nomination for Best Director at the César Awards for her 1985 film Vagabond.
After Demy’s death in 1990, Varda would also make several films inspired by her husband or directly related to his work including Jacquot de Nantes (1991), Les demoiselles ont eu 25 ans (1993), and The World of Jacques Demy (1995).
In 2000 she filmed the documentary The Gleaners & I, about scavengers living on the outskirts of society. Despite having worked steadily throughout her career and despite critical acclaim and numerous awards, prior to this period Varda was known more for being the wife of Jacques Demy then for her own work. However the success of the film caused Varda’s work to be critically reappraised and interest in her to renew. Following this period her work began to be restored and re-released (and in some cases released for the first time) internationally. She began to receive many honorary awards including an honorary César in 2001, an honorary Palme d’or from the Cannes Film Festival in 2015 and an honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2017.
Varda was also nominated for an Oscar at the 90th Academy Awards for Best Feature Documentary for Faces, Places which she co-directed with photographer JR. At 89 her nomination made her the oldest person to be nominated for a competitive Oscar by a matter of weeks.
In 2019 Varda released the documentary Varda by Agnès. The film premiered at the 2019 Berlin Film Festival.
Varda died on March 29, 2019 at the age of 90. She was survived by her daughter, Rosalie Demy-Varda, a producer, and her son Mathieu Demy, an actor and director.
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