The Cinémathèque française paid tribute Tuesday to Agnès Varda, missing Friday. Many personalities of the 7th Art were present to salute the memory and the work of the filmmaker.
Famous members of the "family" of cinema and anonymous came to pay a last tribute on Tuesday to the Cinémathèque française to Agnès Varda, world figure of the 7th Art and pioneer of the New Wave, died Friday.
About 650 people were present for this farewell ceremony in the presence of his children Mathieu Demy and Rosalie Varda Demy, in two packed amphitheatres of the Cinémathèque. Among them was the actress and singer Jane Birkin, who had made with her the film Jane B. by Agnès V. , the actress Sandrine Bonnaire, who had played the heroine of Sans toit ni loi, the artist JR , who had co-directed with her one of his last documentaries, Faces, Villages .
Farewell to a pioneer of the 7th Art
Actors Guillaume Canet and Laetitia Casta, Minister of Culture Franck Riester, Secretary of State Marlène Schiappa, General Delegate of the Cannes Film Festival Thierry Frémaux and President Pierre Lescure, President of Unifrance Serge Toubiana, former Minister of Culture Jack Lang were also there. "It's not a tribute but a family gathering around this rich work that helps to think and reflect," said the director of the French Cinematheque Frédéric Bonnaud, who spoke at the beginning of this ceremony, saluting in Agnès Varda "one of the filmmakers who allow themselves everything".
The tribute began around 11 am with the broadcast of a few minutes of his emblematic film Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), while the people gathered were invited to wear a badge with a drawing representing the filmmaker, an illustration that appeared on a DVD box of his documentaries released in late 2018. The funeral of the filmmaker will then take place at 2 pm at the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris.
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A committed and dreamlike work
A woman of conviction who has built an original work, often a pioneer, on the border between documentary and fiction, Agnès Varda was the author of Sans toit ni loi (1985), Les Glaneurs and Glaneuse (2000), Les plages d'Agnès (2009) and Faces, Villages (2017). Awarded by a Golden Lion in Venice in 1985 for Sans toit ni loi and a Caesar for best documentary in 2009 for Les plages d'Agnès , Agnès Varda leaves a dreamlike, humanist, radical but also whimsical and funny work.