The British Film Institute (BFI) is set to celebrate Agnès Varda with a retrospective. Titled Agnès Varda: Vision of an Artist, the two-month season will take place from June 1 – July 31 at BFI Southbank in London. The iconic French filmmaker will be present to participate in a conversation on July 10.
Titles in the program include classics such as “The Gleaners & I,” a look into the lives of those who make use of discarded objects, and “Cléo from 5 to 7,” a portrait of a pop singer waiting to hear the results of a medical test.
“Agnès Varda: Vision of an Artist will offer audiences a chance to explore a filmmaker who has mastered the cinematic essay, pioneered new ways of expressing her artistic vision, created ground-breaking female protagonists, and repeatedly turned her lens on marginalized communities, producing a rich and inventive body of work during a 60 year career, which continues to this day,” a press release for the event details. “With her training in art history and her experience as a photographer, Agnès Varda continues to push the boundaries of what cinema as an art form can achieve, creating her own singular style by blending reality with poetic imagery, and fiction with documentary.”
Varda recently helped lead a protest at Cannes. Eighty-two women walked the steps to the Palais de Festival to symbolize the 82 women who have walked the steps as directors with films in the competition compared to the 1,688 men. She’s slated to present a new commissioned video installation at Liverpool Biennial 2018, and earlier this year she was up for an Oscar for co-directing road trip doc “Faces Places.”
“How many women were directors in France in the ’50s? Two or three, four maybe. Now there are hundreds,” Varda has said. “More than in other places. And women technicians, cinematographers, sound women. I am so glad about that. It’s not just a man’s job.”
For more information about the event and to buy tickets head over to the BFI’s website.