Agnès Varda I don’t have any regrets but sometimes melancholy 

A few days ago you were giving a lecture in a film school in Northern Brazil. Did you want to share with students your love of cinema?

It is more like a point of view, but I like when you say “love” of cinema. I showed them my films and I tried to transmit them how to get a particular point of view. Indeed, everybody has a camera. Everybody is filming all the time. Today you see everybody with a camera. It’s fine, it’s freedom, and it is democracy. But when somebody is going to make a film, to propose a film, what can you teach them? You can teach them energy, teach them to transmit the love for cinema: to make yourself have a high goal, not just making a film and then it’s gone. You have to choose the goal you want to reach, how you want to achieve it, what your motivation is and also how much energy you are ready to put into your film.

Which particular advice did you give to the students?

During this lecture, there were additionally many questions and answers about movies. But in general, I always try not to make tricks. It’s easy to do the right focus, the right stuff, and the right light. You do not need a filmmaker to teach you that. And I don’t want to teach them the editing.

The Beaches of Agnès is autobiographical. You present your life with a particular tone, through those places where you have spent a lot of time. What was your purpose?

Do you remember when you turned 20? Personally, I remember when I turned 40, 50, 60…Then I saw the 8 and 0 of 80-year-old coming like this and I thought “Oh my God!” In addition, in France, we have this author, Montaigne. When he was old, he wrote something that touched me: “I write for my friends and my family because you are going to lose me more or less soon. And I should transmit them something before I am gone.” I often think about the people who don’t have their parents anymore and I wonder: “Don’t you think you did not ask them enough?”

How do you relate this to your personal life?

I have two children and four grandchildren. Maybe I did some things wrong in my life but maybe they would like to know what I have done. For instance, my son Matthieu Demy who is a French actor told me: “I did not know you escaped when you were eighteen.” Indeed, I went away, I went to Corsica, I wanted to be free; I wanted to be strong. Should the memory be transmitted? Should we know a lot more about the people who die? I am asking myself all the time. And I say to myself, maybe my grandchildren don’t care. Maybe they don’t want to know what happened years ago.

Before this interview, I observed you filming the workers in the street with your hand-held camera. What is it for?

This is for a diary. In every city I go to, they are cutting the trees. So I shoot them. They are trimming them. In Paris as well, so I wondered what is happening these days. I film for myself and maybe for a project in one year. I would like to do an electronic diary of my travels, but loose, very loose. I agreed on a project with the TV channel Arte for the end of 2010. For me, the camera is a tool, a democratic tool. (She pulls her camera out from her bag and starts to film). Now again, that is a point of view. There is a sentence at the end of The Beaches of Agnès: “I remember while I am alive.” That is what I feel. And I am going to promote this idea. You know, it is not like I am going to sell it here, sell it there. It is my life. So when they are cutting the trees, I shoot them cutting the trees, and I feel like something is happening while I am here. I want to make it in a way enjoyable.

Interview by Pierre-Anthony Canovas

Transcription by Dominika Uhrikova