"As long as I'm beautiful, I'm alive." Varda’s memorable chronicle of two hours in the life of an un-compassed pop chanteuse (Corinne Marchand) as she awaits the results of her cancer test brought a woman’s perspective to the mostly male world of the French New Wave. As she hops and shops across Paris, Cléo’s observations turn from the distractions and bright reflections of the external world to the soul within. Shot in fresh “Nouvelle” fashion in the streets in seeming real time, the film features a score by Michel Legrand (THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG), and cameos by Legrand, Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina. CLÉO explores of one of Varda’s favorite themes: “One isn’t born a woman, one becomes one.” (90 mins.)

Preceeded by UNCLE YANCO (1967)—While visiting San Francisco, Varda is surprised to meet a relative she had never heard of before—a painter who lives on a boat in Sausalito and happens to love life. (22 mins.)

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"The pressures here in Hollywood are so great—from all the dead people." LIONS LOVE is an imaginative, cinema verité-like fictional meditation on the banal beauty of Hollywood and the counter-culture of the sexual revolution. Warhol superstar Viva and HAIR creators Jim Rado and Jerry Ragni (all as themselves) play host to legendary underground filmmaker Shirley Clarke (THE COOL WORLD), as they goof off in bed and riff on sex, religion, and stardom while RFK's assassination plays on TV. With cameo appearances by Peter Bogdanovich, Jim Morrison and others, Varda’s free-love time capsule is "A beautiful, cockeyed movie about a ménage à trois.”—Vincent Canby, New York Times.

A documentary look at the outdoor murals of Los Angeles—"who paints them, who pays for them, who looks at them, how this city, which is the film capital of the world, reveals itself by its whispering walls." Roaming from Venice Beach to Watts, Varda sees the murals (many now gone) as both backdrop and mirror for the city’s many cultures. Along the way we meet the makers of a vibrant wall art that ranges from graffiti to photorealism, and reflects everything from roller disco and gang violence to evangelical Christians and Hare Krishnas. Like the art, Varda’s film is rich in illusion and allusion, and like Los Angeles (and the movies), both monumental and ephemeral.

SINGLE OR DOUBLE FEATURE (Double feature with DOCUMENTEUR (AN EMOTIONAL PICTURE))

Double features cost an additional $2 to stay for both films. To purchase an advanced ticket for the double feature, be sure to select the DOUBLE FEATURE rather than the single ticket.

Varda refers to this film as her shadow of MUR MURS, intended to be seen after it. After her lover splits, Emilie (Sabine Mamou, film editor of MUR MURS) tries to rebuild a life with her son Martin (Mathieu Demy) in a harsh Los Angeles hostile to outsiders. “The narrator lives in LA as if it were nowhere. Emilie wanders in the shadows of her emotions, she is obsessed with words, she works in front of the ocean. Her son is afraid of the beasts of the dark, those which can’t be seen. L.A. without sun, fun, or puns.”–Varda.

SINGLE OR DOUBLE FEATURE (Double feature with MUR MURS)

Double features cost an additional $2 to stay for both films. To purchase an advanced ticket for the double feature, be sure to select the DOUBLE FEATURE rather than the single ticket.

Anchored by Sandrine Bonnaire’s unforgettable portrayal of a woman whose refusal to be known or understood pushes her into total detachment from society, VAGABOND was Varda’s biggest success after CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7, and like the earlier film it uses the trajectory of its itinerant female protagonist as a structuring device. Shot in a semi-documentary style, the film opens abruptly on the body of Mona, frozen to death in a ditch on the side of the road. The film then intersperses flashbacks of Mona’s life as a drifter with reminiscences of the people she met along the way, but in spite of Varda’s probing, Mona ultimately remains unknowable, even to herself. She is a cipher, misunderstood by those she has encountered even as they remember her for the camera.

KUNG FU MASTER stars Jane Birkin as a forty-year-old divorced woman who falls in love with her teenage daughter’s video game-obsessed friend. By presenting Birkin’s desire without passing judgment, Varda evenhandedly explores a potentially explosive subject with a seriousness not usually granted to female fantasies. Although told as a straightforward narrative, the on-screen relationships are complicated by their off-screen associations: Birkin’s object of affection is played by Varda’s son, Mathieu, and Birkin’s daughters, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon, play her daughters in the film.

"He had known what he called 'a happy childhood.'" Varda's warm evocation of husband Jacques Demy's youth in Nantes and passion for cinema was finished the year after his death. Using a combination of reenacted memories, on-screen reminiscences, and clips from his films (LOLA, BAY OF ANGELES, UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, and more), interspersed with intimate close-ups of Demy’s fragile body, Varda has fashioned a tender valentine that is one of her most personal and affecting films.

Taking as her inspiration the paintings of 19th-century artists like Millet and Van Gogh of gleaners, peasants practicing the centuries-old tradition of gleaning fields for leftover harvest, Varda embarks on an extraordinary journey across France in search of the gleaners' contemporary counterparts. Herself a gleaner of images, she finds those who rummage, forage, and scavenge, all with their particular stories. Some harvest food for survival, while others are activists whose rejection of consumerism has compelled them to live off “ownerless goods.” Still others are artists who recycle found objects. Connecting her discoveries are Varda’s own reflections on gathering images and memories—and on waste, the environment, aging, and art—woven into a funny, provocative, and poetic film-essay.

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In THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS, which she declares is her last film, Varda turns her camera on herself, returning to the beaches that have played such a significant part in her life and her films. "If you opened people up, you would find landscapes; if you opened me up, you would find beaches. Many old people wish to tell their life. As an old filmmaker, with the enthusiasm and energy of my youth, I tried to find a style and a form to tell my memories, my encounters, and the ups and downs of my life. I shot my film as a kaleidoscope, a collage, a fantasy."—Agnès Varda.

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