Agnès Varda, Landscape

By Agnès Godard, AFC

par Agnès Godard La Lettre AFC n°297

[ English ] [ français ]

Shooting began in May 1990.
Patrick Blossier is the cinematographer.
He shot Vagabond.
He called me in June.
The film Evocation of a Vocation or Jacquot (title still undetermined) has been put on hold.

For as long as needed to make the film into a feature.
He won’t be able to continue.
He tells me that he spoke about me to Agnès Varda.

Agnès Varda calls me.
Patrick showed her the short film I directed after graduation and that he shot.
Agnès liked it.
She asks me to continue her shoot.

We are at her apartment in the Rue Daguerre.

She asked me to come film Jacques Demy in the courtyard.

Very close-up images of him : his hair, his skin, his eyes.
The landscape of his person.

I know that he is very ill.
I only hear his silence.
I see his hair, his skin, his eyes.
I think I can make out a smile.

During the seven weeks of shooting that followed in Nantes, the film gradually became the landscape that Agnès is giving as a gift to Jacques.

The film stops and is supposed to begin again in the autumn.
I cannot continue.
I made a commitment to Henri Alekan.
For the last time, I have a premonition.

Georges Strouvé will be the cinematographer for the last part of the shoot.

Jacques Demy dies in November 1990.

With Agnès Varda’s death, the film is as she wished it, the irreducible trace of their lives.

In the portfolio below, images of Jacques Demy taken from Jacquot.

(Translated from French by Alexander Baron-Raiffe)