“If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes. If you opened me up, you’d find beaches.” So begins Agnes Varda’s engaging self portrait of a life lived in and around the cinema, from her beginning as the female voice of the French New Wave, to her relationships with Jean-Luc Goddard and Jacques Demy, to her metamorphosis into film essayist, of which The Beaches of Agnes is just the latest example. Continuing in the spirit of her critically acclaimed film The Gleaners and I (2000), Varda takes up the camera once again to explore the places that have formed the backdrop for a life lived on the move. Less an autobiography than a meditation on time, memory, and place, Varda's film offers us a glimpse of the complex flow between life and images, forces that shift back and forth with the ceaseless energy of the sea itself.

Presented as part of the Depth of Field 2010-2011 Series: Spaces and Places

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