As part of the ongoing 14th edition of Dhaka International Film Festival, a retrospective session of French New Wave filmmaker Agnes Varda has been included. Her self-funded debut, the fiction-documentary hybrid 1956’s La Pointe Courte is often considered the unofficial first New Wave film; when she made it, she had no professional cinema training and her early work included painting, sculpting, and photojournalism.
Four of her films will be screened tomorrow at the auditorium of Alliance Francaise de Dhaka, Dhanmondi.
The Gleaners and I (2000, 82 min), 10am
In this documentary Varda deals with the issue of wealth and poverty in modern day France by exploring the world of gleaners and pickers.
Jacquot de Nantes (1991, 118 min), 12pm
An evocation of French cineast Jacques Demy’s childhood and vocation for the cinema and the musicals.
Vagabond (1985, 105 min), 3pm
In winter in the south of France, a young woman is found frozen in a ditch. She’s unkempt, a vagabond. Through flashbacks and brief interviews, the film traces her final weeks as she camps alone or falls in with various men and women.
The Beaches of Agnes (2008, 110 min), 5pm
The filmmaker returns to the beaches that have been part of her life. She invents a poetic self-portrait-documentary, visiting the locales of her past and the people who inhabited them, celebrating her 80th birthday on camera.
