Agnès Varda: The Everyday as Film Material

Agnès Varda paid close attention to what people passed by. In The Gleaners and I, misshapen potatoes open into a film about waste, labour, survival and Varda’s own place behind the camera. Something ordinary becomes the beginning of a much wider story.

For the opening session of our Agnès Varda month, Sammy Holden will use selected extracts from the film to examine how framing, touch and narration can change the way we understand an object. We will begin with what is present in the image before rushing to explain it, noticing the routines and human traces contained within everyday places.

Working in small groups, we will use a supplied local photograph or a carefully chosen part of our surroundings to build an eight-image sequence. Each group will decide where the sequence begins, which details deserve a closer look and how our attention moves through the place. We will also choose…