Rediscovering Agnès Varda: The overlooked film pioneer and feminist icon

Agnès Varda is one of the most important figures in the history of cinema, yet she remains unknown to a wide audience, especially compared to her male counterparts.

"I don't want to show things, but to give people the desire to see," she often said, a mantra now echoed in a new exhibition about her life at Barcelona's Center for Contemporary Culture (CCCB).

Born in Brussels in 1928, Varda was a pioneer and the only woman in the Nouvelle Vague, a French art film movement that began in the late 1950s.

She was one of the few female directors of her generation to have a lasting career in cinema, paving the way for future female filmmakers.

Varda used her films to highlight women's experiences, struggles and resilience, exploring and challenging the social norms and gender roles of her time.

"She is an inspiration for the young generation because she was a free woman and a feminist," Agnes' daughter Rosalie Varda, artistic director of the exhibition, told Catalan News.

With innovative storytelling techniques that combined fiction and documentary styles, Varda demonstrated a genuine interest in the everyday lives of ordinary people.

Her films provide a unique and valuable perspective on her time, offering an active testimony to the political fervor of the 1960s and 1970s.

Through her 40 films, Varda documented profound social changes not only in France and Europe, but also around the world.

Her global travels served as powerful witnesses to social change, revolutions, protest movements, and inequalities.

Among these was a trip to Cuba four years after the Cuban Revolution, which resulted in the 1963 short film Salut les Cubains, capturing the essence of Cuban life at the time.

She also explored the African-American civil rights movement in Black Panthers (1968) and the sexual freedom associated with the hippie movement in Lions Love (...and Lies) (1969).

Another key theme in her work was marginality. In The Gleaners and I (2000), Varda explored consumerism and waste in France with a unique perspective on poverty, sustainability, and human resilience.

In her later years, Varda created artistic installations for museums. The exhibition at the CCCB brings together four of these installations for the first time in Catalonia.

Visitors will also be able to see never-before-seen photographs from her 1955 trip to Catalonia, where she photographed Salvador Dalí.

The exhibition Agnès Varda. Photographing, Filming, Recycling can be seen at the CCCB in Barcelona until December 8.