Agnès Varda's personal talent.

On 1954, she wrote and directed the first feature film La Pointe courte without going to film school, studying film production or even having a director's work permit. The story takes place in Seth, where Valda grew up, and describes the process of thinking about people and scenery when the protagonist whose marriage is on the verge of collapse returns to his hometown fishing village. At that time, Valda actually didn't know much about movies, and even had a little knowledge of shooting equipment. She admitted that she didn't even know how to direct actors at that time (Philippe Noiret, the protagonist in the film, was an actor loaned by the director to the Jean Vilar Theatre). However, her enthusiasm and strong creativity for shooting surprised people from the beginning. With the help of friends, she made the film on a very low budget. The funds raised include borrowing money from my mother, mortgaging my mother's house and inheriting my father's 6.5 million yuan (old francs). As a last resort, Valda and the actors and technicians involved in the filming created a cooperative called TAMARIS FILMS, with a 35% stake. That is to say, the total budget is10 million, and almost no one gets paid when filming, so Valda will have to wait until 13 years to pay off this "work investment". At that time, the budget of an ordinary film in France was 70 million. However, due to the innovation of the film and the director, the producers boycotted it, so it could not be released immediately. This film is four years earlier than the official history of the French New Wave, so it has become a model for several directors of the "New Wave" in the future with its low cost and unprofessional production. The editor of the film is alain resnais [Reynet], a famous director who will shoot The Love in Hiroshima in the future. It was at this time that Valda met the main members of The Movie Notes for the first time, which started the "new wave" of "a little red among all greens".

However, due to the commercial failure of this film, she can only make some commissioned short films. L'Opera-Mouffe (1958) returns to the theme of The Short Horn, that is, the characters' inner thinking about existence and its subtle relationship with the location and scenery. This trait is also constantly appearing in her later films. Cleo de 5a7 (1962) is her most famous film. It tracks Cleo walking in the streets of Paris in a near real-time way, fearing that she will be found to have cancer: she rediscovers her life, environment and even herself. Illness and marriage are also the themes of Le Bonheur/ 1964 and Les Creatures/ 1966. However, after that, several shooting plans of Valda were rarely realized. So I went to America to film lions, love and lies (Lion Love/1969).

Saluts Cabuins/ 1963 is probably the first film of Valda to make a direct political statement. Because she accepted the invitation of Cuba Film Academy to visit, she brought a Leica camera, but she brought back more than 2000 photos. She is deeply fascinated by the entertainment in the only socialist country of Latin nation. With those photos as the media, the still photos come alive in the rhythm of the cha-cha dance by connecting the dance clips shot in Paris in series. This is a film worthy of the name, in which she pays tribute to the Cubans. Loin du Vietman/1967 is a collective anti-Vietnam war film. Although it is composed of independent short films, it has been communicated and coordinated from pre-operation to post-editing. This made her understand the importance of participating in collective creation, and at the same time realized that collective creation can only be a dream because of the supreme power of film directors in creation. How to brainstorm collectively without drowning yourself in the opposite situation is the most dangerous temptation for all directors, and Valda is no exception. Black Panther, filmed in the United States from 65438 to 0968, is a documentary about Huey Newton, the leader of the black movement. Due to the difficult production conditions, technically, both the sound and the color are very rough, but she went directly to the prison to visit Newton and directly contacted the core figures of the incident. This was probably the documentary film that was closest to the black movement by white directors at that time. Originally a film commissioned by the TV station, after many twists and turns, it was finally rejected by the TV station. Valda gambled on American hippie culture and black human rights movement during this period, but missed the French student movement. After returning to France, she filmed a documentary/drama for TV- Nausicaa/1970, telling the love story of a French schoolgirl and a Greek intellectual. There were some interviews with Greek dissidents in exile in France, and they talked about their views on Greek politics and dictatorship. Because of his father, Valda thought that there was always a dispute with Greece that needed to be resolved, so this film was born. However, due to political considerations, the film was not shown on TV, but was shown at a film festival in 1970 Brussels without editing.

Another feature of Valda's films is that she often derives from one film to another. L 'une Chante (L 'Autrepas/1976) tells the story of the women's liberation movement in France in the 1960s and 1970s through the friendship between two women. Later, the characters in the film became the protagonists in Love in Iran (1976) and Quelques Femmes Bulles (1977) respectively.

After that, Valda moved his family to Los Angeles. When another shooting plan was blocked by funds, she decided to shoot a documentary first. She has been struggling to raise money for filming, but at this time she was unexpectedly invested by the French Ministry of Culture. Even more incredible, the theme of the film turned out to be the street murals in Los Angeles that she was interested in. Mur murs/1980 is about artists and money. She visited many immigrant artists who brought different cultures to California and talked about their artistic ideas and sources of funds. Then the documentary "The Liar" (Documentary EUR/1981+0) was called "Shadow Whispering on the Wall" by Valda, because compared with the sunshine and colorful of the former, Documentary Liar presents a gloomy Los Angeles. We also see street murals in California, but they talk about the separation of bodies, the separation of one body from another, and the separation of bodies from themselves.

Sans Toit Niloi (1985) describes the life of a wandering woman. The harshness and explosiveness in the film are rare in Valda's films. This work or many awards have also brought her film life to another high point. The following films, Jane B Paragnis v Agnes v/1987 and Kung Fu Master/1987, are what Valda likes to call twin films. The line "Love is the biggest mystery" has appeared in both films. Contrary to the difficulties during the preparation of other films, the shooting cycles of these two films overlap. Television stations usually make simple retrospective documentaries for movie stars by interviewing and connecting movie clips. "Thousand Faces of Treasure" subverts the genre of TV stations in a reverse way. At the end of filming, jane birkin showed Valda a four-page essay, which is the origin of Kung Fu Master. They originally planned to make a 20-minute short film, but in the end they finished a feature film. In the film, the fear of cancer in the 1960s has passed, and the 1980s is shrouded in the shadow of AIDS. The "uncertainty" and "threat" brought by the disease to the future have once again become the driving force of Valda's films. This is also a film in which Valda and Jane Birkin participate.

Valda has a film family, which is a rare exception in the film industry. Besides owning a production company, I make movies independently. Her husband took Lola (Lola/196 1), Paraplumies de Cherbourg (1964) and Princess Donkey (Peau d' &；; AcircNe/1970) and other famous French directors jacques demy. The costume designer of "Thousand Faces of Treasure" is Rosalie, Valda's daughter (she was also the costume designer when Ge Daer filmed "Passion", 1982). Son Mathieu has been an actor of Valda since he was a child. Valda has made three films about her husband recently. First of all, Jacquot de Nantes/1990) tells the story of jacques demy's crazy childhood about making movies. After 1990' s death, he produced the documentary "The World of Jacques Demi" (L 'Universe de jacques demy/1993), telling his film career. Later, Les Demoiselles ont EU 25 ans/1992 is a documentary about jacques demy's Demoiselles de Roche fort/1966, which combines the original live recording with the local celebration of Rochefort's birthday more than 20 years later. In these films, Valda shows her infatuation and yearning for her husband as a woman. Looking at the world film industry, this is definitely a special case.

1994, in order to celebrate the centenary of the film, Valda once again accepted the entrustment of the Ministry of Culture and made a star-studded film "Les 100 et 1 nuits", which was regarded as her most unsuccessful work by film critics. Six years later, Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse /2000 was invested by cable TV station Canal+. It first premiered on TV, then it was shown in a small theater the next day, and finally the number of theaters increased. Both the audience and critics spoke highly of it. Not only did the box office perform well, but also participated in a considerable number of international film festivals.

Her films always contain a passion and concern for life, and sometimes have an experimental tendency, and carry out a series of exploration with soft, chic and bold characteristics in narrative. From the beginning, she was an artist who constantly explored the outside world, constantly absorbed the people and things she met, and merged them into a new possibility. What's even more amazing is that she has been able to maintain her unique insistence on art, not only as a producer of images, but also as a fan of images. Landscape postcards, pictures and photos copied on the wall, street murals, statues, graphic scenes and TV program fragments that often appear in her movies are proof. As a photographer, she has a special preference for facial expressions. Can praise the scenery beautifully; I always keep close to current events, so as to open up a vast fuzzy zone between documentary and drama.