It's coming!: 3 day countdown to the Marathon de Paris

Aspiring to big things!
(but the sun and the heat may foil plans)

Possible Pace Chart (comparing with Chicago results)

Agnès Varda: an evening with a great cinéaste @ Forum des images

"Usually after directors make their first feature-length film, they don't ever go back to making shorts.  I've gone back to making shorts.  I guess that's like having moved up to the big kids class and then going back to elementary school.  Well, I've gone back with the little kids."

"When I'm making a film, I often get completely absorbed in what I'm doing.  Since I'm also holding the camera, this leads to some interesting footage.  (She then explains several 15 minute segments that she's found of her pant leg, and other such shots.)  When I was filming "Les glaneurs", I discovered a clip in which I had been carrying the camera at my side and while I was walking, the lens cap was swinging and bouncing around in front of the lens.  It amused me so much that I decided to leave it in the film.  Then, I decided to take it out.  After all, we were making a film on a serious subject: people living on the margins and consuming what society had discarded.  But it amused me so that I decided to leave it in.  And then I took it out.  And finally, I decided to leave it in.  For why must one always be serious when talking about a serious topic."

"Some of my films have been shown all over the world.  It is moving when a scene touches (not necessarily emotionally, but leaves a mark on) a particular group.  In Mexico, there was a group of young people who conveyed to me their reaction to such a scene.  Like the story of the swinging camera lens, this was also taken from. "Les glaneurs".  At a moment during the filming, I was riding shotgun while one of my colleagues was driving.  I have always enjoyed watching large trucks go by on the road, so I decided to film them.  Watching them through the camera, I realized that I could put my hand in front of the lens and pretend to catch the trucks by snatching my hand closed in the field of vision.  So that's what I did.  As we drove down the road, I spent my time catching trucks."

These were just some of the gems that came from last night's "Master Class avec Agnès Varda".  Having seen her most recent documentary called "Les plages d'Agnès" in which she explores her own past while exploiting different tecnhiques and mises-en-scène, I was stunned to see how much this Agnès resembled the one on stage before me.  She was just as eccentric and loveable as in her film.  Perhaps, as some said about "Les plages", she is slightly narcissitic as well, but who isn't.  At times she expresses her pleasure for what she has done.  At other times she is humble to the point of self-depricating, but mostly, she just loves telling stories about her lives and "normal humans", as she says.

I have been to these "Master Class" at the Forum with a couple of other film directors,Abdel Kechiche and Andre Techiné, whose films I enjoy and whose interviews I have appreciated.  However, in both instances, the directors sat the the table with Pascal Mérigeau (the man who conducts all of these interviews) and mostly just responded to his questions while facing him.  It usually felt as though the two men were having a private conversation, and we the audience were the observers on the opposite side of a two-way mirror, quite uninvolved in the discussion between these two men.  

However, when Madame Varda walked out onto the stage, she promptly stated that she was very intimidated.  Not by the audience, but by the format.  In fact, it was really the phrase "Master Class" that gave her pause.  She preferred something more a long the line of "An evening with" or "A conversation with", which is actually what these sessions are.  For anyone who has ever been to a masterclass, there is nothing "class-like" about these encounters.  And with that small grevience voiced, the Agnès Varda show began.  Although Monsieur Mérigeau did ask a few questions, he played a much more accessory role that usual.  In fact, he might as well have been an extra with just a couple of lines to recite next to storytime with Agnès.

Apparently, her favorite color is burgundy.  On the large screen that served as both a backdrop and an advertisement of the evening to come, there is an image of Mme Varda wearing a burgundy coat and the same color outfit underneath.  As she appeared on stage, her hair was "styled" in the same "bob cut" that I have seen previously.  The top three-quarters of her hair revealed the three quarters of a century that has been her life.  The bottom quarter, the same burgundy color as on the screen and as the head to toe outfit (minus the black maryjanes) that she was wearing on stage.  In a way, the proportions of her hair coloring seemed to suggest a sort of "sablier" (hourglass, in French) for her life.  So, perhaps we can expect another 25 years of stories from Agnès?  I certainly hope so.