CinéVardaExpo

By Susie Allen, AB’09

Renowned French film director and visual artist Agnès Varda will spend Oct 8 to 15 in residence at UChicago as part of a major weeklong celebration of her work, CinéVardaExpo.Agnès Varda in Chicago.

CinéVardaExpo includes an opening reception and public lecture by Varda on Oct 9, a conversation between Varda and artist and Department of Visual Art faculty member Jessica Stockholder on Oct 11, and screenings of selected films throughout the week—many attended by Varda herself. As part of the celebration, the Logan Center Gallery will host an exhibition of Varda’s recent work, Photographs Get Moving (potatoes and shells, too),” from Sep 11 to Nov 8.

“In her work, Agnès Varda displays a powerful talent for weaving together questions of the individual and the collective, the subjective and the objective, the real and the imaginary, and the beautiful and the dismal,” said Dominique Bluher, Lecturer and Director of MA Studies in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies and one of the organizers of Varda’s residency.

“I love Varda’s poetic wit and intelligence, and the way she anchors the conceptual in the sensual. She is also unafraid of transformation: as she likes to put it, ‘I am an old filmmaker who has become a young visual artist,’” Bluher

added. “I am thrilled that Agnès Varda is coming to the University of Chicago to celebrate her work with us.”

At 87, Varda is one of the most significant voices in French and European cinema as well as in the world of art. Sometimes called the “grandmother of the French New Wave,” she has created more than 40 short, documentary, and fiction films for both TV and cinema, and staged many exhibitions of photographs and installation pieces. Among her best-known works are Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cléo From Five To Seven, 1961), Sans toit ni loi (Vagabond, 1985) and Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (The Gleaners and I, 2000). Her latest feature length film, Les Plages d’Agnès (The Beaches of Agnès, 2008), premiered at the Venice Film Festival in Sep 2009.

Since 2003, Varda was invited by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist to show her visual art at the Venice Biennale. Since then, her photography, installations, sculptures, and performance pieces have been exhibited internationally.

During her visit, Varda will participate in several events for UChicago students. These include master classes on her work as a director of fiction and documentary films and a gallery talk for graduate students from the Department of Visual Arts, the Department Cinema and Media Studies, and the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. Cinema and Media Studies is offering a mixed undergraduate/ graduate course on Agnès Varda’s work this fall.

More information and full event schedule at varda.uchicago.edu.