2019 was a quiet year for The Public Cinema, Knoxville’s free-admission, venue-hopping “microcinema.” They screened one new release in April—Christian Petzold’s Transit; one classic film in September—Barbara Loden’s Wanda; and a series of installation pieces throughout the month of Big Ears. This was practically radio silence compared to the 18 screenings hosted in 2017, not counting that year’s expansive Big Ears lineup! The reasons for the scaling-back of programming are easily understood, however: not only is it a feat to finance these screenings and negotiate their locations, but Paul Harrill (one-half of The Public Cinema’s core team) had been hard at work finishing and releasing his own feature, Light From Light, which has opened to great acclaim across the country. Oh, and these guys also have day jobs. Blessing Knoxville with free art films, understandably, has taken a backseat.
Fortunately for us, The Public Cinema is back with exciting news. Not only will they be hosting more screenings in 2020, but they’ll be doing so by joining forces with Central Cinema, Knoxville’s other haven for independent film culture. As of last month, The Public Cinema has found a hopefully permanent home at Central Cinema as one of their numerous monthly series, most of which we chronicled last July to celebrate the theater’s first anniversary. This partnership grants The Public Cinema not only a regular location, but a regular screening schedule as well: whereas screenings in recent years have often been sporadic, they will now take place on the first Tuesday of every month. And in keeping with The Public Cinema’s mission statement as a non-profit, admission will remain completely free.
The Public Cinema at Central Cinema kicked off on January 7th with a screening of 63 Up, the latest installation in the long-running documentary project that has checked in with the same group of people every seven years for the past half-century. Between now and the as-of-yet unannounced Big Ears program in late March, Knoxvillians can look forward to two screenings in this series. In just a few days, The Public Cinema will present Varda By Agnès, the final film by the late great Agnès Varda. Later, the first week of March will bring I Was At Home, But… by German filmmaker Angela Shanelec. I plan to go in blind to Shanelec’s film (all I’ve heard is that it’s very good!), but I had the opportunity to attend the premiere of Varda By Agnès at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. The film is a rare treat for anyone with an interest in cinema history, and I’d like to take this opportunity to sing the praises of Agnès Varda and the documentary she chose to be her final statement as an artist.
If you’re completely unfamiliar with Agnès Varda, here’s a quick primer: she was the sole female filmmaker of the influential French New Wave, sparking the movement with La Pointe Courte (1955) several years before François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959) and Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960), both of which which are often incorrectly cited as the birth of the movement. Varda married Jacques Demy, another French New Waver acclaimed for original screen musicals like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), and between them they made perhaps the most accessible and charming films of the movement. Varda had only seen five films in her life before making La Pointe Courte, and in her early work she developed a singular and idiosyncratic style that blended scripted melodrama with documentary realism. And in another bit of “she did it first” trivia: Varda’s debut feature invented the so-called “Persona shot” approximately 11 years before it’s namesake.
La Pointe Courte (1955) by Agnès Varda
Persona (1966) by Ingmar Bergman
Varda’s unique cinematic approach was often devoted to visualizing the interior lives and structural inequality of women: Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) follows a screen starlet in real time as she waits on a potentially fatal diagnosis; Le Bonheur (1965) juxtaposes the life of a man’s wife with that of his mistress; One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977) traces the intersecting lives of two wandering activists as they both fall in love with motherhood and fight for abortion rights; Vagabond (1985) is presented as an investigation into the death of a young homeless woman, imagining her personal encounters over the course of the last days of her life.
Varda, of course, went on to do unique work blending narrative and documentary forms for a full half-century before capping off her career with Varda By Agnès. Curiously, this film isn’t the first time Varda made a film that she expected to be her last: The Beaches of Agnès (2008) and Faces Places (2017) include sequences set on beaches that were designed as possible swan songs for the filmmaker. Without spoiling the final moments of Varda by Agnès, I will say that one of those moments gets revisited here in a beautiful way.
The Beaches of Agnès (2008)
Faces Places (2017)
Varda passed away in March of last year, just a few weeks after her home country’s premiere of Varda By Agnès. Varda’s own voice is the film’s most prominent element, as the documentary is presented as an extended masterclass lecture intercut with plenty of clips from her films. Varda is a thoughtful and amusing analyst of her own work, and the commentary she offers here feels like a gift to her audience. Visually, the lecture playfully and inexplicably hops from location to location – including several iconic ones from Varda’s back catalogue – which serves to draw attention to the artifice of the whole documentary enterprise. What would a Varda film be without reality-breaking flourishes like this? Highlighting the artificiality baked into documentaries as well as the reality captured by fiction films was a lifelong project for Varda, something Varda By Agnès brings into clearer focus.
Vagabond (1985)
Varda by Agnès (2019)
For those already familiar with the filmmaker, Varda By Agnès will play as an obviously deserved celebration of her life’s work – including plenty of late-period installation pieces that might remain otherwise impossible to experience – and more importantly, as an opportunity to hear her speak at length about her process and philosophy on art. For the unfamiliar, Varda By Agnès will serve as a particularly inspiring watchlist-generator, as well as a personal, beyond-the-grave introduction to one of the warmest film artists you’ll ever have the pleasure to know.
The Public Cinema will present their free screening of Varda By Agnès at 7:00pm on February 4th – the first Tuesday of the month, their new regular time slot – at Central Cinema, 1205 N Central Street, in Knoxville.
