Skip to Main Content

still from Les fiancés du pont Mac Donald
courtesy Ciné-Tamaris

Canceled—Varda Shorts: Art and Life

film series: Agnès Varda Viewing Art

Agnès Varda Viewing Art

  • Saturday, April 4, 2020
  • 4:30 p.m.
  • East Building Auditorium
  • In-person

As a precautionary measure in light of COVID-19, the Gallery has canceled this event. We hope to welcome you to the Gallery soon and thank you for your support.

Styled as a silent film, Varda's early short Les fiancés du pont Mac Donald features the cast and director of Jean-Luc Godard's Bande à part (1961, 5 minutes)T'as de beaux escaliers, tu sais is her amusing homage to the Cinémathèque Française on the institution's fiftieth anniversary (1986, 3 minutes). The So-Called Caryatids is a reflection on the caryatids of Parisian architecture, set to Jacques Offenbach's music and Charles Baudelaire's poetry (1984, 12 minutes). In Le lion volatil, the filmmaker playfully spins a romantic yarn around Frédéric Bartholdi's famous lion in Place Denfert-Rochereau (2003, 12 minutes), while in Elsa la rose, poets Louis Aragon and Elsa Triolet recount moments of a happy youth together (1966, 20 minutes). Finally, in an episode from the miniseries Agnès de ci de là Varda, the filmmaker relives moments with art from her perpetual travels — from the Beaubourg in Paris, to the Venice Biennale, to the Cologne Cathedral, to quiet exchanges with artist friends Christian Boltanski and Annette Messager (2011, 45 minutes). (Subtitles, total running time 97 minutes)