"If you opened people up, you would find landscapes; if you opened me up, you would find beaches." Agnès Varda

"Cleo from 5 to 7" (1961) by Agnès Varda

This past weekend was the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, NC. Last year I saw "Man on Wire" at Full Frame which then went on to wide release and to win an Oscar for best documentary. However, at the time, I knew nothing of the movie and, though I found it to be such a profoundly beautiful and moving film, what made it even more so was that I went on a whim to see it. I stumbled upon it with no expectation and discovered one of my favorite films.

This year I saw "The Beaches of Agnès" by French filmmaker / photographer / conceptual artist Agnès Varda who tells the story of her life as (her words): "a kaleidoscope, a collage, a fantasy."
And not only was it such a tender and compelling story about an 80 year old woman looking back at her fascinating life, but to see her create and be creating, here, in this film, was inspiring.

Some of my favorite images include: a pair of grown men pushing a cart loaded down with a projector and screen projecting a film which starred their father (a man they only remember in photos), the director in a giant blue whale, the director cleaning herself "like a cat" before eating a giant "American breakfast" of pancakes the size of her face, the use of mirrors, of nets. And wouldn't it be fun to go through her film catalogue backwards, as a type of homage to the scenes of Varga's own physical representation of remembering? The stepping backwards - away from the camera, carefully and slowly - such a lovely, lovely image.

....that girl!

I recently watched the documentary "Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Leonard Cohen" which is about the legendary songwriter when he was a young dark-haired poet taking us around snowy Montreal in 1965. It's an interesting little film as a study of the "artist as a young man," but it's also great to look at.

I especially liked the young Canadian women with their thick black eyeliner that stayed put even when those made-up eyes entered into bistros and coffee shops from wet wintry streets. They reminded me of Marlo Thomas and that late 1960s sitcom "That Girl" which I loved, loved, loved when I was little.

And with Ann Marie's array of candy-colored shift dresses, her single girl apartment (especially those two little steps and platform on the inside of her front door so every time she entered her apartment - she entered onto a stage. I think Laverne and Shirley had this same "entering on a stage/platform" effect during their Hollywood years...) and her dark lashes and that black eyeliner - well, it that made being a grown-up look so darn cute.

"Clothes with a history / Clothes with a mystery / Sweaters and shirts / That are brother-and-sistery..."

I just realized it's Poetry Month so why not another poetry posting?
Mary Ann Hoberman, our Children's Poet Laureate, has a way of making wearing second-hand clothes seem utterly delightful:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/videoitem.html?id=171

Birth Day

If we are to begin to catalogue, collect, and compile that which strikes us - then the best place to start may be with Ms. Parker's own "Inventory."

"Inventory"
by Dorothy Parker

Four be the things I am wiser to know:

Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

Four be the things I’d been better without:

Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

Three be the things I shall never attain:

Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Three be the things I shall have till I die:

Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.