By Howie Movshovitz
I have been thinking a lot about Agnés since she died just shy of 91 years old on March 29, 2019. She made her first film, La Pointe Courte in 1954, establishing the French New Wave five years before the boys, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and others got into the act. She appeared this past February at the Berlin film festival for the Premiere of her last film, an autobiographical piece called Varda by Agnés. To celebrate the theatrical release of this new film and her life, there is a traveling retrospective of her films playing around the U.S. this winter. (See details below)
It’s hard to be objective when you’re watching a film about people you’ve known and cared about for nearly 40 years, but I’ll try. I guess you could say that prolific British director Michael Apted’s Up documentaries represent the original reality series, following the lives of a group of seven year-old schoolkids he first met in 1964, and then checking in on their lives via celluloid every seven years. I myself first caught up with the series watching 28. 63 Up is now in theaters, and Apted’s “kids” are even more interesting as they approach retirement. And although Apted’s numerous Academy Award nominations for 1980’s Coal Miner’s Daughter assured his place in the annals of cinema, it will be the stories of Tony, Andrew, Sue, Nick, Bruce, Jackie, Peter, Lynne, Paul, Symon, John, Suzy, and Neil for which he might best be remembered.
