In the intro to Part 12 of this series, having just seen the trailer for The Matrix: Resurrections, I asked what it meant for Lana Wachowski to return to that series. The answer, explicitly stated in the film, was that Warner Bros was going to make another Matrix with or without her, and under those conditions, Wachowski signed on. I’m almost completely sure that no one was threatening Agnès Varda to make her own biopic without her involvement, but the first thing she clearly states at the beginning of The Beaches of Agnès (2008), is that she is playing a role of a person telling her own life story, but that it’s other people that interest her. The challenge of the project becomes how to reconcile these competing impulses.
Varda by Jon – Part 14: Here and There
On the success of Agnès Varda’s intended final film The Beaches of Agnès, she was invited to attend a variety of film festivals to showcase her latest work. Armed with her trusty digital camera and the opportunity to travel the world, Varda set out to meet and connect with artists and to showcase their exhibitions. Over the course of the following three years, Varda assembled and edited her footage into a 5-part miniseries called Agnès de ci de là Varda (2011).
Episode 26 – Criterion Catchup
On this episode of Cinema Dual, Jon and Chris tackle their Criterion Blu-Ray pile of shame and whittle down their to-do list.