Varda By Agnes Quotes & Sayings

I don't believe in inspiration that arrives like a bolt from the blue ... It seems to me that the more motivated I am by what I film, the more objectively I film. — Agnes Varda

I cannot say something different to one person and then another. — Agnes Varda

Sometimes I want to work with a DP, sometimes I want to work myself. I go to 35mm, 16mm, it's all the same, but it depends on what you want to tell and what are the tools you need. — Agnes Varda

I'm interested in people who are not exactly the middle way, or who are trying something else because they cannot prevent themselves from being different, or they wish to be different, or they are different because society pushed them away. — Agnes Varda

If we opened people up, we'd find landscapes. — Agnes Varda

I'm not nostalgic. My memories are back here in my mind. — Agnes Varda

When I saw what painting had done in the last thirty years, what literature had done - people like Joyce and Virginia Woolf, Faulkner and Hemingway - in France we have Nathalie Sarraute - and paintings became so strongly contemporary while cinema was just following the path of theater. I have to do something which relates with my time, and in my time, we make things differently. — Agnes Varda

I thought, If I'm an ancestor and grandmother when I'm twenty-five, I should go peacefully to the real time when I'm an ancestor and a grandmother. — Agnes Varda

When I started my first film, there were three women directors in France. Their films were OK, but I was different. It's like when you start to jump and you put the pole very high - you have to jump very high. I thought, I have to use cinema as a language. — Agnes Varda

I was eighteen, this was back in '46, so we also had these very frightening images of soldiers in the streets of Paris. So the effect of war, plus my shyness, plus my lack of education - I was afraid of men, really. It changes later, but it took me a certain time to adjust. — Agnes Varda

I'm not interested in seeing a film just made by a woman - not unless she is looking for new images. — Agnes Varda

I'm still fighting. I don't know how much longer, but I'm still fighting a struggle, which is to make cinema alive and not just make another film. — Agnes Varda

Gleaning is getting things that are abandoned. I did not abandon my early pictures, my photos, my early films. It's just going through my body of work as something I can pick from. — Agnes Varda

You have to be strong to be a carpenter, maybe, but the director of a film doesn't need to have muscles. — Agnes Varda

I call [ordinary people] real people, because they have in themselves an incredible treasure - stories, a way of speaking, a way of sharing, an innocence and a perversity which I find very interesting to discover little by little. — Agnes Varda

It's interesting work for me to tell my life, as a possibility for other people to relate it to themselves - not so much to learn about me. — Agnes Varda

Agnes Varda changed my view of cinema; she directs from an artistic point of view, and a film is most of all the expression of an artistic director. I learnt to enter the world and the imagination of a director. — Julie Gayet

The mirror is the tool of the one who wants to do a self-portrait. And if you want to make a photo you need a mirror. — Agnes Varda

There is a song of Gainsbourg that Jane Birkin sang, and the words are beautiful in French. It says, "Le jeu et les moi." It's impossible to translate, because it has a very nice sound. It sounds so lovely in French. So I took that because it was the subject: I and myself and myself and I. Which is, in a way, boring, because it is a contradiction. — Agnes Varda

If the purpose of the stumpy little NFT theatre under Waterloo Bridge is not to acquaint young audiences with Ozu, with Ophuels, with D. W. Griffith and with Agnes Varda, then what exactly does it exist for? — David Hare

It's nice to think that we have in ourselves the energy. It's somewhere, but it's sleeping sometimes. I try to wake it up when I need it. — Agnes Varda

I go back to many films that I really love. Some Bresson, some Godard of the early times, the Cassavetes of those years I love. And the early Wim Wenders. But my own films I don't watch, unless I need them. — Agnes Varda

I think people should be different. I love people who don't go by the rule that you have to be careful because you're old, you have to do this and that, you have to eat this and that. — Agnes Varda

The story of a couple is always very fragile, especially over more than thirty years. People know it's not easy, and even though you have strong feeling and desire and endless love, it doesn't always happen. — Agnes Varda

I've seen many films, and many beautiful films. And I try to keep a certain level of quality of my films. I don't do commercials, I don't do films pre-prepared by other people, I don't do star system. So I do my own little thing. — Agnes Varda

I live in cinema. I feel I've lived here forever. — Agnes Varda

When I did the first edit of Les plages, it was very dry and very square in a way. I was just saying the minimum. I said, Well, if this is the minimum, I don't make it. So I tried to make it more refined. I tried to find images, allegorical images, that I could use to express things that I didn't want to say or didn't want to show or I was not able to find how to show. — Agnes Varda

I know people could tell incredible stories. People have been in concentration camps, or women being raped, or a man going to war and not recovering from it. People have been robbed and beaten. A lot of people have had strong events in their life, which I didn't. — Agnes Varda

You know, an hour and fifty-four minutes is too much for audiences. They get nervous. — Agnes Varda

Hands are the tool of the painter, the artist. — Agnes Varda

I had a very good time when I did The Gleaners - even though the people are poor, and I was suffering to see the conditions, and plus they are not such lovely hearts. They are tough to each other, they beat each other, they are rude and they are violent and they drink. They're not sweethearts, you know, but some were so interesting. — Agnes Varda

Nostalgia doesn't make sense, because it's like bringing the memories back to be a special part of my day or to be part of my week. And I'm inside my memories the same way I'm inside my everyday life. — Agnes Varda

I think I did fifteen long features and fifteen documentaries, or something like this, which is very little when you think of people making a film every year. Some people have done fifty or sixty films. — Agnes Varda

The first exhibition [Publo Picasso] was organized by the communist party - because of his position during the war and all that. — Agnes Varda

I never met Publo Picasso. I took pictures at the Festival d'Avignon, but I was too shy to ask to go in his studio. It does not look like me now, but I was very shy, and shy of men also. I think there was a world that frightened me totally. — Agnes Varda

If I was tall and blonde, I might have been a dancer or singer. — Agnes Varda

I made a braid because Chinese old people, they say that the God will take you by the hair to join you with - but God didn't take me, so I cut the braid. — Agnes Varda

I have respect for literature. If he found the words, if she found the words - this is a book! — Agnes Varda

I never fought, I never learned kung fu or boxing, I never went into these sportif competitions. I wouldn't cross the ocean. I think it's ridiculous to take such risk. But look, people love to do that. But I was not afraid of doing things I wished to do. I did not think that woman would be restrained. I never saw that, especially not in filmmaking, where you don't have to be strong. — Agnes Varda

I was a photographer first.I worked alone. I did it my way as much as I could. I have been sort of courageous about doing things, because I didn't think I should do less than my brothers. — Agnes Varda

Society is so slow. A feminist is a bore. — Agnes Varda

In my films I always wanted to make people see deeply. I don't want to show things, but to give people the desire to see. — Agnes Varda

I hated myself totally white. So now I cheat. It's my white hair, and I put color there. My grandson says I'm punk. — Agnes Varda

People think you are an orphan when you are a child, and don't believe that old people can feel that they are orphans. — Agnes Varda