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Visages Villages

Please note that this event is now archived.
Documentary

Sessions

Friday, 13 April 2018 | 18:00 La Maison du Cinéma

                                    Poster of Visages Villages

Oeil d’or du meilleur documentaire – Festival de Cannes 2017
Nomination – Oscar du Meilleur documentaire 2018
Nomination – Meilleur film documentaire – César 2018
Nomination – Meilleure musique originale pour Matthieu Chedid – César 2018

Agnès Varda, whose unique cinematic vision since the 1950s has earned her a loyal following of enthusiastic cinephiles around the world, and the iconic photographer/muralist JR, boasting over a million followers on Instagram, have more in common than one might imagine.
Both share a lifelong passion for images and how they are created, displayed, and shared. Agnès chose to explore her passion through cinema and documentary, JR through his emotionally arresting open-air photo installations.
When JR, a long-time fan, went to meet Agnès at her home on Rue Daguerre, they both knew immediately they wanted to work together. VISAGES VILLAGES (FACES PLACES) documents their heart- warming journey through rural France and the unlikely, tender friendship they formed along the way.

Director

Agnès Varda, JR .

Screenplay

Agnès Varda, JR

Country

France

Year

2016

Duration

1h29

Category

Documentary

Language

French

Production

Ciné-Tamaris and Social Animals

Distribution

MK2 Mile-End
View the trailer Press kit
About

Agnès Varda

Agnès Varda was born in Ixelles, Belgium in 1928 and grew up alongside four brothers and sisters. In 1940, her family moved to the south of France to escape the war. She spent her teenage years in Sète then moved to Paris where she studied at the École du Louvre and took evening classes in photography at the École de Vaugirard.
Varda became a photographer for Jean Vilar when he founded the Avignon theater festival in 1948, then for the Théâtre National Populaire at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris. She held her first personal exhibition in 1954 in the courtyard of her home.
That same year, Varda made the move to cinema without any formal training. She founded Ciné-Tamaris (a cooperative) to produce and direct her first feature, La Pointe Courte, which has earned her the title “Grandmother of the French New Wave.” She has since directed short films and features, both fiction and documentaries.
In 2003, she began her third career as a visual artist at the Venice Biennale.
Varda lives on Rue Daguerre in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. She married filmmaker Jacques Demy (deceased in 1990) and together they raised Rosalie Varda-Demy, costume designer turned artistic director, and Mathieu Demy, actor and filmmaker.

About

JR .

JR was born in 1983 near Paris and currently splits his time between both France (Paris) and the US (New York). In 2001, he found a camera in the Paris Metro and began documenting his adventures in the subway and on rooftops, then pasting the pictures on outdoor city walls. This marked the beginning of his work with monumental black and white photos.
JR exhibits freely on the walls of the world, attracting the attention of people who don’t typically visit museums. He pastes photos in the public space to reveal the faces and stories of people who aren’t visible, from the French slums to Turkey, from Times Square to the Pantheon in Paris, from the ghettos of Kenya to the favelas of Brazil. When pasting, community members take part in the artistic process, and there is no stage to separate the actors from the spectators.
Since he remains anonymous and doesn’t explain his huge portraits, JR leaves room for an encounter between the subject/protagonist and the passerby/ interpreter. This is the essence of JR’s work: asking questions.

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