Agnes Varda, so the story goes, arrived in California from Paris following her husband, the filmmaker Jacques Demy. In 1967, he had been contracted by Columbia Pictures to make a film (which would become his 1969 film “Model Shop”) and, after being in San Francisco for a week, Demy reportedly wrote to Varda and told her he wanted to remain there, and requested she join him.During Varda’s first extended stay in California she made two short films and one feature-length; two more were made during a return to the state over a decade later. This work is included in a new box set called “Agnes Varda in California,” which will be released by the Criterion Collection on August 11.The two earliest films Varda made in California offer a unique vantage point into her work. “Black Panthers” (1968) is a document of a protest against the imprisonment of activist Huey P. Newton led by the titular political organization, made for French television, while “Uncle Yanco” (1967) is a portrait of Varda’s father’s cousin, who landed in California at a young age and ended up an old hippie in Sausalito — it combines interviews with obviously staged scenes. “Painting is something that grows,” Uncle Yanco says, one hand on his hip and defiantly facing the camera. “When you enter inside a painting you don’t know where it will lead.” He easily could have been describing one of Varda’s films. Once you’re inside you have no idea where it’s going.While “Black Panthers” displays Varda’s growing interest in activism (she and Demy were living in California during the May ’68 protests in Paris) and the American vernacular of the period, “Uncle Yanco” derives more from the perspective of Varda’s own experience — that of the outsider, a foreigner enchanted by the volume and color and light spinning all around her.This would reach its apex in “Lion’s Love (…And Lies)” (1969), made from the ashes of another project — reportedly called “Peace & Love,” — that Varda had been preparing with the same producer who had been working with Demy at Columbia. The project was shelved after they refused to give Varda final cut. Warhol superstar Viva stars with James Rado and Gerome Ragni (co-writers of the musical “Hair”) in the mostly unscripted film that zips back and forth between comedy and paranoia, the three characters producing an endless stream of words. Shirley Clarke appears as herself — but very much a stand-in for Varda — and stays with the trio while she’s in town meeting with producers who are thinking about backing her latest project. The entire thing is charmingly ramshackle, with Varda occasionally appearing in the background of a shot via a reflection of a mirror, or the characters stopping scenes in the middle of their dialogue to question the authenticity of their words or the truth of the scene.Varda met many friends during her time in California, most notably the singer Jim Morrison, who stayed close with her until his death. But she eventually went back to Paris, only to return to California a decade later during an extended break from her husband. This second period resulted in two of Varda’s best films: “Mur Murs” (1980) and “Documenteur” (1981).On her return trip, Varda is still very much the outsider with a camera. But instead of capturing what is coming to life, what is new and exciting, she is engaged with that which is disappearing. “Mur Murs” is an obsessive, eye-popping catalogue of street art in Los Angeles during the period, an ever-changing mirage of color and image sliding across the screen. But what’s evident is that the art we’re seeing, the art that is often ignored, will one day be gone. “Documentaur” was, at the time, the most directly personal film Varda had made (she has since made a series of stunning personal documentaries about her life), a semi-fictional narrative starring Varda’s editor Sabine Mamou as a single-mother starting anew with a young son, played by Varda’s own child. Somber and perpetually overcast, the cloudiest movie ever made in California, the film is also restless. These two releases were paired together during their initial theatrical run in the United States, although Varda has been keen to refer to “Documentaur” as “an emotion picture” — something more honest and personal, despite its semi-fictive scenario.
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