Listening Amitava on 03 Jul 2009
Agnès Varda
Thanks to my film-maker friend Paromita Vohra, I have just finished watching Agnès Varda’s “The Gleaners and I” (2000). The 81-year-old Ms. Varda has been in the news recently for her new documentary—reviews of which mention the earlier film (”Ms. Varda is picking through the world, close to home and far afield, finding images that please her and give her pause, like her wrinkled hand, the one not holding the camera, that she scrutinizes with rue if no obvious regret.”) Her style is pure documentary, and pure essay, striking in its mix of observation and memory. My favorite moment in the film was one when the film-maker paused in the presentation of facts about the world to say that what she has been trying to do is record with the hand holding the camera the signs of change in the other hand, the horror of it, she said, the horror of advancing age. Here’s another recent appreciation of Varda and her style of creating “a sort of living, moving collage.”
(Paromita, aaj DVD bhej raha hoon. Pukka!)















