Viva Varda! The Films of Agnès Varda
Screening Dates
  • February 20, 2020 8:50
New Restoration

For the twenty-fifth anniversary of husband Jacques Demy’s musical The Young Girls of Rochefort, Agnès Varda travelled to the coastal town of Rochefort to document the public festivities marking the occasion and recount the film’s on-location making. Varda’s nostalgic tribute includes new and vintage interviews; behind-the-scenes footage she shot during the original production; and the recollections of locals with treasured memories of their encounter with movie glamour. Star Catherine Deneuve and composer Michel Legrand are among the principals of Demy’s film who journeyed to Rochefort for the anniversary. Others — including Demy himself, who died in 1990; and Deneuve’s co-star and older sister Françoise Dorléac, who died, at age 25, in a car accident some weeks after Rochefort​’s 1967 release — didn’t live to see the day. A fond celebration of a magical, much-loved movie.

Note

Varda/Demy
Agnès Varda’s husband Jacques Demy was himself a prominent and popular French director, known for his ravishing romances, fairy tales, and musicals, including The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). The two filmmakers were married in 1962; Demy died, at age 59, in 1990. Varda’s films about her husband and his cinema — she made three — form an important part of her own body of work. She also oversaw important restorations of Cherbourg and Rochefort. The latter screens as part of this program.