Movie Night: Agnes Varda in California

July 20, 2017

Doors open at 7:00 pm, Film starts at 7:30 pm

The legendary French filmmaker Agnès Varda produced some of her most provocative works in the United States.

Her remarkable career began in the 1950s and has continued into the twenty-first century. After temporarily relocating to California in the late sixties with her husband, Jacques Demy, Varda, inspired by the politics, youth culture, and sunshine of the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, created three works that use documentary and fiction in various ways. She returned a decade later, and made two other fascinating portraits of outsiderness. Her five revealing, entertaining California films, encompassing shorts and features, are collected in this set, which demonstrates that Varda was as deft an artist in unfamiliar terrain as she was on her own turf. We’ve selected two of these films to screen:

BLACK PANTHERS (1968)

Agnès Varda turns her camera on an Oakland demonstration against the imprisonment of activist and Black Panthers cofounder Huey P. Newton. In addition to evincing Varda’s fascination with her adopted surroundings and her empathy, this perceptive short is also a powerful political statement.

MUR MURS (1980)

After returning to Los Angeles from France in 1979, Agnès Varda created this kaleidoscopic documentary about the striking murals that decorate the city. Bursting with color and vitality, Mur Murs is as much an invigorating study of community and diversity as it is an essential catalog of unusual public art.

TICKETS

Regular Admission: $7
Student, Senior (65+): $5
Verge Member: FREE

Purchase tickets online at https://vergeart.ejoinme.org/agnesvarda or over the phone (916) 448-2985.

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