Part of the film is devoted to your early career as a photographer. Could you describe your transition from photographer to filmmaker?
The question is raised by the cat in the film, he acts as an interlocutor posing questions to me, so it is not purely a monologue. Right from the day I shot my first film footage I thought ‘this is it I want to be a filmmaker’, and I never looked back. However my first film La Pointe Courte didn’t make a dime, so I continued to be a photographer until Cléo de 5 à 7, which was seven years later. I did a short film, but directing a short doesn’t make any money. When I prepared Cléo de 5 à 7 I made the switch from photographer to filmmaker, From then on I would make a living from that. I continued to take pictures for location scouting, or of people, but just for the purpose of remembering. Recently I started to take pictures again for exhibitions. I am in the middle of everything, I prefer not to be in a category, I am what I feel.
You have said Les Plages d’Agnès is stylistically more like a collage than a documentary. Was the experience of making such a complex and personal film; cathartic, exciting or emotional?
Yes, it is a collage. Though this film wasn’t made to review what had happened or to re-evaluate my life; ‘did I do well or not?’ I wouldn’t say I had a very extraordinary life, but I crossed many things. I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time. To be in China at the beginning of the revolution was interesting. Then to be in Cuba in 1961, while the whole left side of the world looked at Cuba as ‘this is the situation we’d like to be.’ It is easy to forget now, but in 1961 everybody loved the Cuban revolution. I made Black Panthers at a time when people believed that they had to say something themselves, and not always in relation to white theorists. The Black Panthers made the body and mind theory, and shortly after they collapsed and disappeared. I was lucky to be there at the time. I saw them, I filmed them.
Could you talk about your creative process as a director?
I was organised for this film, but I wanted to be prepared for surprises. Sometimes puzzles are made up and when it’s finished you know the image. For Les Plages D’Agnès I wanted to do a collage with the method that painters use it, it is not supposed to fit. I still wanted to give the film some fluidity some pleasure; if you liked the film and enjoyed it, you went with the film. You didn’t have to have to say, “I would change this and that…” I told things that were maybe not that important, my part was not to decide what was important.
What projects, films or exhibitions, are you currently working on?
In ten days time I will be in Lyon for the biennale. I am exhibiting three shacks; in one there is a film, in another there are portraits. There is also the one that you see in the Les Plages D’Agnès, the installation made from filmstrips: Cabin de cinema, Shack of Cinema. It is very complicated to organise, but I am doing it again with an original print. It is a real, composite print. The installation is complete with sound. I hope it is original to do something like that. Of course, as a good gleaner, it was important not discard the whole thing, and to reuse the film strips somehow.
Les Plages D’Agnès is in cinemas from 02-10-2009
Agnès Varda’s films are to be released in two volumes by Artificial Eye 30-10-2009
