Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda’s first film, “La Pointe Courte,” is often cited as a precursor to the French New Wave movement, but Varda never quite fit into anyone else’s category. She was more interested in observing than belonging. That independence is part of what made her so important.
At a time when filmmaking was overwhelmingly male, Varda made work that centered women without turning them into symbols. In “Cléo from 5 to 7,” she followed a singer over the course of two hours as she waited for medical results. Not much happens, externally, but internally, everything does. The film insists that a woman’s interior life is worthy of attention. And that insistence changed things.
Her work expanded the language of what film could hold: time, attention, tenderness—all the things that tended to get edited out.
