Agnès Varda: Serious Subjects, Playful Form

Agnès Varda could move from social observation to a joke, or from a documented fact to a personal aside, without losing sight of the subject. In The Gleaners and I, a heart-shaped potato becomes an image of waste and something Varda chooses to keep. The playful moment changes how we look at what has been discarded.

For the final session of our Agnès Varda month, Sammy Holden will return to selected extracts from the film and examine how information, humour and the filmmaker’s own response can share the same space. We will use these ideas to consider the essay film: a form that can follow associations and digressions while still making a clear argument.

Working in small groups, we will choose an everyday subject and gather the material for a two-minute essay film. An image might return with a different meaning, a fact could sit beside a personal response, or…