The Cannes Film Festival unveils its poster which pays tribute to the late, great Agnès Varda

April 15, 2019 E. Nina Rothe

As I learned at this year’s Qumra, held by the Doha Film Institute, the grand dame of French New Wave cinema Agnès Varda was all about finding the stories, the viewpoints that no one else would bother with. The Festival de Cannes, in its poster just unveiled for the 72nd edition of the festival, pays homage to La Varda but also to her indomitable spirit by showing the filmmaker on her first cinematic venture perched high up on a platform, atop the shoulders of a crew technician. She is looking to capture that image, the viewpoint which no one else would have even thought about. She is Varda, in all her perfectly humble and adventurous attitude. The same Varda who asked me, to my utter disbelief, if I’d liked her “little film” a few years ago in Cannes.

In their press release introducing the stunning poster, the Festival de Cannes wrote the most beautiful tribute to Agnès Varda.

All the way up. As high as she could go. Perched on the shoulders of an impassive technician. Clinging to a camera, which seems to absorb her entirely. A young woman, aged 26, making her first film. It is August 1954: we are in the Pointe Courte neighbourhood of Sète, in the South of France. In the dazzling summer light, Silvia Monfort and Philippe Noiret explore their fragile love, surrounded by struggling fishermen, bustling women, children at play and roaming cats. Natural settings, lightweight camera, shoestring budget: with La Pointe Courte (presented in Cannes, in a screening on the rue d’Antibes, in 1955), Agnès Varda, the photographer from Jean Vilar’s Théâtre National Populaire is paving the way for a young cinema, of which she will remain the only female director. Like a manifesto, this still photo from the set sums up everything about Agnès Varda: her passion, aplomb, and mischievousness. Ingredients of a free artist, forming a recipe she never stopped improving. Her 65 years of creativity and experimentation almost match the age of the Festival de Cannes, who celebrates each year visions which reveal, dare and rise higher. And who remains keen to remember. As she liked to point out, Agnès Varda is not a woman filmmaker: Agnès Varda is a filmmaker. She often attended the Festival de Cannes to present her films : 13 times in the Official Selection. She was also a Jury member in 2005 as well as President of the Caméra d’or Jury in 2013. When she received the Honorary Palme d’or, in 2015, she evoked “resilience and endurance, more than honour”, and dedicated it “to all the brave and inventive filmmakers, those who create original cinema, whether it’s fiction or documentary, who are not in the limelight, but who carry on.” Avant-garde but popular, intimate yet universal, her films have led the way. And so, perched high on this pyramid, surveying the beach at Cannes, young and eternal, Agnès Varda will be the inspirational guiding light of this 72nd edition of the Festival!

I just wish to add that Varda has become a personal inspiration to keep going lately.

Her own important loss when her husband Jacques Demy passed away in 1990 didn’t stop her. It actually inspired her to create and continue, this time making Demy the center of her art. Loss in my own life almost pulled me to the floor, closed my eyes and shut my inner joy, the spark I needed to keep going. But after watching Varda’s work and realizing that as women we also hold a responsibility, to do work which highlights and showcases what men would never find inspiring and yet is so very important for the world at large, I got myself up, dusted myself off and started looking at the keys of my computer once again, with renewed enthusiasm.

So thank you Festival de Cannes, for featuring a filmmaker on your poster who makes me, makes women proud to be who we are!

Stay tuned as Thursday, April 18th, the official selection of this year’s festival will be announced, live on Facebook, Twitter, Dailymotion and YouTube.