Event

Agnès Varda in conversation with Molly Nesbit

A pioneer of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda not only made films during the nouvelle vague, she helped inspire it. 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. In 1962, she released the seminal nouvelle vague film Cléo from 5 to 7. Over the coming decades, Varda became a force in art cinema, conceiving many of her films as political and feminist statements, and using a radical objectivity to create her unforgettable characters. She describes her style as cinécriture, and it can be seen in formally audacious fictions like Le bonheur and Vagabond as well as more ragged and revealing autobiographical documentaries like The Gleaners and I and The Beaches of Agnès.

Molly Nesbit is Chair and Professor in the Department of Art at Vassar College as well as a contributing editor of Artforum. Her books include Atget’s Seven Albums (Yale University Press, 1992) and Their Common Sense (Black Dog, 2000). The Pragmatism in the History of Art, the first volume in a collection of her essays, has just been published by Periscope Press. Since 2002, together with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Rirkrit Tiravanija, she has tri-curated Utopia Station, an ongoing book, exhibition, seminar, website and street project.

Free, reservation not required

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Collaborative Events

Monday, February 25 | 6:00pm
Agnès Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962)
Agnès Varda’s Sans toit ni loi (1985)
Agnès Varda’s Les graneurs et la glaneuse (2000)
Slought Foundation, 4017 Walnut Street

Wednesday, February 27 | 6:00pm
Agnès Varda’s Documenteur (1980-1)
Agnès Varda’s L'essai: 7 p., cuis., s. de b. (1984)
Slought Foundation, 4017 Walnut Street

Monday, March 11 | 7:00pm
Agnès Varda’s Daguerréotypes (1975)
Agnès Varda’s Cinevardaphoto (1962-2004)
International House, 3701 Chestnut Street

Thursday, March 14 | 1:00pm
Master class with Agnès Varda
Scribe Video Center, 4212 Chestnut Street, 3rd Floor

Thursday, March 14 | 7:00pm
Agnès Varda’s The Beaches of Agnès (2008), Director Agnès Varda in person
International House, 3701 Chestnut Street

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Acknowledgements

Agnès Varda @ Penn is made possible thanks to the generous support of University of Pennsylvania's Cinema Studies Program, Department of Fine Arts, Emily and Jerry Spiegel Fund to Support Contemporary Culture and Visual Art, Slought Foundation, and Temple University's Department of Film and Media Arts. Additional support has been provided by University of Pennsylvania's Department of French Studies, Department of English, Penn Humanities Forum, and School of Arts and Sciences. We also acknowledge the collaboration of International House of Philadelphia and Scribe Video Center.

Jointly organized by Nora M. Alter, Timothy Corrigan, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Aaron Levy, and Nicola M. Gentili.