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In earlier posts, a variety of exemplary female filmmakers have been discussed, from early pioneer Alice Guy Blaché to cinematographer Ellen Kuras to screenwriter Pamela Gray to casting director Marion Dougherty and many more.  This year has seen more inspiring landmarks and creations in the exceptional life and career of Agnès Varda, one of the featured directors of Chapters 5 and 6 of Moving Images (and who showed notable generosity towards our project).  From the Moving Images text, “director Agnès Varda has maintained a long career in which she has led her own production company and has made films that have established her highly personal integration of community life and a spontaneous method and style in her movies.  Varda has created some of the most innovative and free-spirited short and feature films of her time shooting with an impressively wide range of approaches: feature productions in 35mm; documentaries in 16mm or other platforms; commercials and public service announcements; journal type projects in videotape and digital video, among others.”

At the Cannes Festival this past May, Varda received a lifetime achievement award — only the fourth given in the history of the festival — and more recently, she premiered a lively short film starring teenager Jasmine Thiré — Les 3 Boutons — that provides a neat introduction to her original approaches to moviemaking and storytelling.  From casting to locations to editing to narrative digressions, it is pure Varda and a treat. She is a master of cinematic language through both image and sound.  The Criterion Collection has also released a new box set of some of her less known work, and it includes such important and innovative shorts as Uncle Yanco and Black Panthers.