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Intro: Agnès Varda

Chris Stults & Vera Brunner-Sung

Mar 02, 2020

Filmmaker Agnés Varda seen from the cheeks up, standing behind a glass table clock and two decorative ceramic cats

Want to know more about the work of the late, great, French filmmaker Agnés Varda? For this edition of Intro, Wex Associate Film/Video Curator Chris Stults, the organizer of our mini retrospective of Varda's films running March 6–26, discusses her work with Vera Brunner-Sung, a filmmaker, Ohio State professor, and fellow Varda fan. They cover some of their own experiences watching Varda's work and why it remains essential viewing nearly 50 years after Varda's breakthrough film, Cleo from 5 to 7. That film kicks off the series on March 6 at 7 PM, screening with the 1958 short Diary of a Pregnant Woman. Below the podcast link, you can take a look at trailers for three of the features in the series.

A close-up of enamel pins of Agnés Varda's head and the words "Viva Varda" on an orange background, pinned to a gray and white sweater. Pins are from the collection of Wexner Center Associate Film/Video Curator Chris Stults
"For me, so much of it is centering female experience, not necessarily to the exclusion of all other gendered experiences that are there. But that's what felt so radical about her work when I was a film student 15 years ago, still immersed in the dominant masculine narrative of the New Wave."
Vera Brunner-Sung

Images: Agnés Varda in The Gleaners and I, courtesy of Janus Films; Varda enamel pin and "Viva Varda" pin as worn by Wex Associate Film/Video Curator Chris Stults.

 

 

Cleo from 5 to 7, screening March 6 at 7 PM.

 

The Gleaners and I, screening March 7 at 7 PM with The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later

 

Mur Murs, screening March 27 at 7 PM with Documenteur