Varda by Agnès

Varda by Agnès (Varda par Agnès, 2019) is a documentary you can watch online on iFILM — the farewell film of Agnès Varda, a founding figure of the French New Wave. From a theatre stage, she walks through her own sixty-year career.

Using photographs and clips as she talks, Varda lays out what she calls cine-writing: her habit of building films out of chance encounters, ordinary people and whatever light is available. The journey runs from Rue Daguerre in Paris to beaches, gallery installations and trips to Los Angeles and Beijing, tracing the line from her early black-and-white pictures to her later video art.

This is less a tidy retrospective than a living self-portrait by an artist who stayed curious and wry to the very end. It reached audiences just weeks before her death in 2019, closing the book on one of cinema's great careers. A perfect way in for newcomers and a gift for longtime admirers. Stream Varda by Agnès online on iFILM.