Agnès Varda’s new triptych on the nature of photography comprises three documentaries made over a forty-year span. Ydessa, the Bears, and etc. concerns an exhibit of early photo-portraits of people with teddy bears (along with their obtuse connections to the Holocaust) and the rather creepy woman who curated it; Ulysse revisits a photograph that Varda took in the mid-1950s and the lives of its subjects; and Saluts les Cubains is a charmingly dated celebration of the Cuban Revolution on its tenth anniversary, an animated film composed of hundreds of still photographs of Cuban life and culture (featuring Beny Moré, Wilfredo Lam, and, of course, Fidel). Each film meditates on the strange power of photographs and the emotions and memories they provoke. And as with her celebrated documentary, The Gleaners and I, Varda provides an intimate and inviting commentary, sharing her own thoughts and reminiscences like a trusted, if idiosyncratic, confidant.
It is also interesting to note that she has had the same adorable, short-cropped haircut for the last half-century.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Cine Tamaris 35mm print
22 Feb 2005 12:59 AM | Submit Comment
