Agnès Varda - Quotes

Le cinéma — c'est un art.
Varda, Agnès.

My working process I like to call cinéciture: I take my time to dream and to reflect. I do not follow theories but rather trust perceptions and feelings.
Varda, Agnès.

In my films I always want to make people see deeply. I don't want to show things but to give people the desire to see.
Varda, Agnès.

What I want to do is to involve each person in the audience which I do by being involved myself.
Varda, Agnès.

I am always very precisely implicated in my films, not through narcissism but through honesty in my approach.
Varda, Agnès.

I need images, I need representation which deals in other means than reality. We have to use reality but get out of it. That's what I try to do all the time.
Varda, Agnès.

My films have been always vital experiences.
Varda, Agnès and Genevieve Yue (Interviewer). "California Dreaming." in: Reverse Shot. 2009. (English).

Maybe I shouldn’t have done that, I could have done this. So the life is what we did, what we actually acted and really made.
Varda, Agnès and Genevieve Yue (Interviewer). "California Dreaming." in: Reverse Shot. 2009. (English).

The door is open, the light is on, and I’m there sitting quietly.
Varda, Agnès and Genevieve Yue (Interviewer). "California Dreaming." in: Reverse Shot. 2009. (English).

You know, the boundaries between contemporary art and cinema are so rigid. It's unbelievable. The film critics don't know my artwork and the art world doesn't know my films.
Varda, Agnès and Liza Bear (Interviewer). "Interview." in: Interview Magazine. 2009. (English).

By the way, buying stuff cheap at a flea market is not gleaning. Gleaning is reclaiming what others have discarded.
Varda, Agnès and Liza Bear (Interviewer). "Interview." in: Interview Magazine. 2009. (English).

But in the film I also mention that my mother was losing her memory. I'm losing mine now, more or less. Everyone does. At least what's in the film won't be forgotten.
Varda, Agnès and Liza Bear (Interviewer). "Interview." in: Interview Magazine. 2009. (English).

And I'm paying homage to two women ... The other is my mother. She would make mistakes, but I would say, "Let her be. She's free." Because forgetting is a form of freedom.
Varda, Agnès and Liza Bear (Interviewer). "Interview." in: Interview Magazine. 2009. (English).

As I walk backward on the Santa Monica pier I say, "Memories are like flies swarming around me and I'm not sure I want to remember."
Varda, Agnès and Liza Bear (Interviewer). "Interview." in: Interview Magazine. 2009. (English).

I must have spent about 15 summers in Sète, so I got to know the locals. Every evening I would write down bits of conversation I had heard-I had no tape recorder. I didn't take notes on the spot because I didn't want to look like a journalist. I wanted to be friendly. Then, later, back in Paris, I wrote a script based on my notes. I wanted to recount my memories and to honor those who made me who I am. I'm not Madame Agnès with her loves and her children. It's my life story as a filmmaker, seen through the eyes of a filmmaker.
Varda, Agnès and Liza Bear (Interviewer). "Interview." in: Interview Magazine. 2009. (English).

Left-bank is a term invented by Richard Roud. In fact, Chris Marker, Resnais, and I, who had our hearts on the left politically, lived on the real Left Bank in Paris. But since that time, I like to branch out. I don't like to repeat myself. [phone rings] Hello? Radio Canada? Can you give me 10 minutes? [covering mouthpiece] My film is opening in Canada on the 13th. No? I'll stay on the line then . . . The tool of every self-portrait is the mirror. You see yourself in it. Turn it the other way, and you see the world . . .(reading a note from Béar) My friend here reminds me that Sartre said, "Hell is other people." Well, I don't agree with Sartre. I like others. My film could use Gertrude Stein's title, Everybody's Autobiography.
Varda, Agnès and Liza Bear (Interviewer). "Interview." in: Interview Magazine. 2009. (English).

I should say nothing! I’m through with it! I hate to repeat myself all the time. I cannot invent totally. I cannot say something different to one person and then another. I cannot make it totally different each time, you know. I say so much in the film and so much even in the press kit!
Varda, Agnès and Sheila Heti (Interviewer). "Interview." in: The Believer. October 2009. (English).

I was nineteen and I put a bowl on and I said, Cut around! Because it was not the fashion at the time when I did that hairdo—and I kept it all my life! At the time of Cléo I grew it a little more, and when Jacques died I grew a bit here. [She pulls out a strand.] I made a braid because Chinese old people, they say that the God will take you by the hair to join you with—but God didn’t take me, so I cut the braid. Now it’s the same hairdo but it has two colors—come on! It’s different! It’s like an ice cream of chocolate and vanilla! I tried a wig. I hated myself totally white. So now I cheat. It’s my white hair, and I put color there. My grandson says I’m punk. I tell you—better they laugh about their grandmother than think she’s a bore. Some grandmothers are really boring! They ask, Ah ha ha—did you do this?—be careful—put your sweater on! C’est ça. So, in a way, we try to please them somehow.
Varda, Agnès and Sheila Heti (Interviewer). "Interview." in: The Believer. October 2009. (English).

But I was not afraid of doing things I wished to do. I did not think that woman would be restrained. I never saw that, especially not in filmmaking, where you don’t have to be strong.
Varda, Agnès and Sheila Heti (Interviewer). "Interview." in: The Believer. October 2009. (English).

When I did Cléo, I thought, I have to work with time. We feel time differently when we are suffering or are in pain or we are waiting for something. So subjective time became the subject for me—plus the duration of the time of the film that the spectator perceives.
Varda, Agnès and Sheila Heti (Interviewer). "Interview." in: The Believer. October 2009. (English).

I waited for each film to become important for me. If I had no ideas for a film, I didn’t do a film. So I made not that many films for fifty-four years of working. I think I did fifteen long features and fifteen documentaries, or something like this, which is very little when you think of people making a film every year. Some people have done fifty or sixty films.
Varda, Agnès and Sheila Heti (Interviewer). "Interview." in: The Believer. October 2009. (English).

At that time I was down because I was so much hoping—and so was Jacques—that we could go on forever. We were disappointed more than anything. More than separated, we were disappointed. I think it’s something I can tell. The story of a couple is always very fragile, especially over more than thirty years. People know it’s not easy, and even though you have strong feeling and desire and endless love, it doesn’t always happen. Then we came back together back in Paris.
Varda, Agnès and Sheila Heti (Interviewer). "Interview." in: The Believer. October 2009. (English).

So I tried to find a language for the film—not just telling stories. I picked the Picasso painting because it said more than I could explain.
Varda, Agnès and Sheila Heti (Interviewer). "Interview." in: The Believer. October 2009. (English).

You are always in the world. Even in Vagabond. I am not on the road, I am not eating nothing. But in a way we all have a Mona. We all have inside ourselves a woman who walks alone on the road. In all women there is something in revolt that is not expressed. I’m interested in people who are not exactly the middle way, or who are trying something else because they cannot prevent themselves from being different, or they wish to be different, or they are different because society pushed them away.
Varda, Agnès and Sheila Heti (Interviewer). "Interview." in: The Believer. October 2009. (English).

I think people should be different. I love people who don’t go by the rule that you have to be careful because you’re old, you have to do this and that, you have to eat this and that. I try to do nothing. I drink rosemary when I have a lot of work to do. People take coffee, they take speed, whatever. I take rosemary. My company is called Ciné-Tamaris, which is rosemary. That’s my speed. Hot water and herb. But it’s nice to think that we have in ourselves the energy. It’s somewhere, but it’s sleeping sometimes. I try to wake it up when I need it.
Varda, Agnès and Sheila Heti (Interviewer). "Interview." in: The Believer. October 2009. (English).

...when I started I did not know I wanted to be a filmmaker. You know, I started—I made a film. Then when I finished I said, Oh my god it’s so beautiful—I should be a filmmaker!
Varda, Agnès and Sheila Heti (Interviewer). "Interview." in: The Believer. October 2009. (English).

I said I was not nostalgic because what’s the point? I’m not nostalgic. My memories are back here in my mind. If you remember the last sentence in my film, I say, “I’ll remember while I’m alive.” Do you remember that? I’m sitting with my brooms around me. Because you know in France, a broom means age, so I’m sitting with 80 brooms. Did you get that? And when I’m sitting with my brooms, I said, well, life is a strange thing. But I’ll remember it while I’m living. So nostalgia doesn’t make sense, because it’s like bringing the memories back to be a special part of my day or to be part of my week. And I’m inside my memories the same way I’m inside my everyday life. I am sometimes melancholy, which is not the same. Sometimes I feel sad, but this is not nostalgia, because I don’t want time to come back.
Varda, Agnès and Noel Murray (Interviewer). "Interview." in: A.V. Club. June 30, 2009. (English).

Just pain, that’s what I feel sometimes. Melancholy. I’m missing some people, you know, and this is not nostalgia. I miss them. This is melancholy.
Varda, Agnès and Noel Murray (Interviewer). "Interview." in: A.V. Club. June 30, 2009. (English).

I try to break the barrier, break the border, and give freedom to film and allow myself to show the painting in the middle. And to speak about people, speak about myself, and then discuss the Cuban Revolution or show images of theater. Showing myself is part of the process, as well as discussing important issues of self-control, of birth control. So I’m trying to open the field of cinema, and not to say “This is that.”
Varda, Agnès and Noel Murray (Interviewer). "Interview." in: A.V. Club. June 30, 2009. (English).

My approach to the fishermen, in a way, you find it again in my approach in The Gleaners and I. In the same way I tried to approach these people who have nothing, who eat garbage, who eat on the floor. And I give them the right to speak, to express something, to be themselves. Not only to beg or be poor, but think and express, which I think is important.
Varda, Agnès and Noel Murray (Interviewer). "Interview." in: A.V. Club. June 30, 2009. (English).

The way of working has changed with the equipment, you know. On La Pointe Courte I was in 35mm, then later I did 16mm. But now it is a digital camera. Not the smallest one, but I work with medium-sized ones, and I can film myself. I’ve changed my approach to people and to filming because of the new equipment, which is important.
Varda, Agnès and Noel Murray (Interviewer). "Interview." in: A.V. Club. June 30, 2009. (English).

People like my films. They understand me through my films; it’s like a connection that has been established between all my work and myself and the audience and the viewer. So it’s like a sum. Is that the word? When you add things? It’s like a sum of some of my experiences, not all of them. Well I picked, I chose, I spent a long time editing. And I said I want no nostalgia. This is the film, period.
Varda, Agnès and Noel Murray (Interviewer). "Interview." in: A.V. Club. June 30, 2009. (English).

I just didn’t see films when I was young. I was stupid and naïve. Maybe I wouldn’t have made films if I had seen lots of others; maybe it would have stopped me. I started totally free and crazy and innocent. Now I’ve seen many films, and many beautiful films. And I try to keep a certain level of quality of my films. I don’t do commercials, I don’t do films pre-prepared by other people, I don’t do star system. So I do my own little thing.
Varda, Agnès and Noel Murray (Interviewer). "Interview." in: A.V. Club. June 30, 2009. (English).

All these memories are linked to film. This is not film, it’s our life, but it’s linked. Life and filming and filming and life.
Varda, Agnès and Noel Murray (Interviewer). "Interview." in: A.V. Club. June 30, 2009. (English).

If I was tall and blonde, I might have been a dancer or singer. No, I’m not tall, I’m not blonde, I’ve never had a concert. You have to invent life.
Varda, Agnès and Noel Murray (Interviewer). "Interview." in: A.V. Club. June 30, 2009. (English).

I'm a film-maker, so I wanted to do something that obliged people to know my films, to be interested in my filmmaker's life.
Varda, Agnès and Melissa Anderson (Interviewer). "Agnès Varda from 0 to 80." in: The Village Voice. June 24, 2009. (English).

People always see me as active and strong. I said I owe it to myself to make a sad film.
Varda, Agnès and Melissa Anderson (Interviewer). "Agnès Varda from 0 to 80." in: The Village Voice. June 24, 2009. (English).

Some people understood Le Bonheur. Women have become upset and asked, ‘How could you replace a woman with another woman?’ That’s what life is about. A man is replaced by another man in war. A woman is replaced by another woman in life.
Varda, Agnès and Gerald Peary (Interviewer). "Interview." in: The Real Paper. October 15, 1977. (English).

L’Opera Mouffe was a short film about the contradictions of pregnancy. I was pregnant at the time, told I should feel good, like a bird. But I looked around on the street where I filmed, and I saw people expecting babies who were poor, sick, and full of despair.
Varda, Agnès and Gerald Peary (Interviewer). "Interview." in: The Real Paper. October 15, 1977. (English).

It’s about a passive woman who becomes an active woman. She takes off her wig and begins to look at people. Sometimes a woman needs a shock as big as death.
Varda, Agnès and Gerald Peary (Interviewer). "Interview." in: The Real Paper. October 15, 1977. (English).