Inspiration and good mood: THAT’S CINEMA! | Agnès Varda | TEDxVeniceBeach

00:25:53
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmGap7-RxdA

Summary

TLDRThe speaker explores the profound concept of inspiration that drives creativity and the essence of life, recounting numerous personal stories and influential meetings. They discuss a pivotal encounter with painter Yanko Varda, which led to an impromptu film, and how everyday events, such as witnessing gleaning at a farmer's market, inspired the documentary 'The Gleaners and I'. Influences range from personal relationships with figures like husband Jacques Demy to the artistic impact of famed artists like Picasso and Calder. Through films like 'Cléo from 5 to 7', inspired by paintings that juxtapose beauty and mortality, the speaker illustrates the depth of inspiration. Additionally, the speaker shares their experience of creating 'Faces Places' with artist J.R., emphasizing the importance of personal connection and empathy in art. The overarching theme reveals how the continuous desire to create is fueled by varied inspirations — from everyday life to deeply personal experiences — and how sharing these creations enhances their meaning, establishing an empathetic connection with the audience.

Takeaways

  • 🌟 Inspiration is essential for creativity and life.
  • 🎨 Art and everyday life serve as sources of inspiration.
  • 📽️ Personal stories and encounters can inspire films.
  • 👥 Sharing art builds connection between creator and audience.
  • 🔄 Continuous reinvention in art is admirable.
  • 🍏 Glimpses of ordinary life can be deeply motivational.
  • 👩‍🎨 Cléo inspired by art, exploring beauty and mortality.
  • 🖼️ Empathy with people enhances artistic endeavors.
  • ❤️ Personal relationships deeply influence creative output.
  • 🤝 Collaborative art projects generate new ideas.
  • 🎥 Documentary films provide insight into marginalized lives.
  • 👵 Age differences in collaboration can enrich the work.

Timeline

  • 00:00:00 - 00:05:00

    The speaker delves into the concept of inspiration, emphasizing its powerful link with creation and sharing. They reflect on a 60-year career and the drive that keeps them from retiring: the endless motivation and desire for creation, identifying inspiration as the essence of life and art. An anecdote from 1967 illustrates impulsive creative action, where they met an artist named Varda, felt immediate inspiration, and began filming a documentary, capturing the essence of the meeting and the subject's joy.

  • 00:05:00 - 00:10:00

    The speaker is inspired by both renowned artists like Picasso and Calder, and by simple, everyday events. They share a story from 2000 encountering people collecting discarded produce, which sparked the idea for the documentary "Les glaneurs et la glaneuse" (The Gleaners and I). They reflect on finding beauty in unexpected places, comparing it to conventional beauty, as showcased through their film "Cléo from 5 to 7,” which grapples with themes like fear and mortality amidst societal tribulations in the 60s.

  • 00:10:00 - 00:15:00

    During the 1960s, buoyed by historical and personal themes, the speaker explores creativity influenced by another form of art—a painting by Hans Baldung Grien. They describe the inspiration drawn from this artwork, exemplifying a tension between beauty and death, which fed into their film "Cléo from 5 to 7." The inclusion of documentary elements within fictional works is highlighted, driven by genuine people and real life, weaving authenticity into storytelling.

  • 00:15:00 - 00:20:00

    The speaker recounts a personal story involving their late husband, Jacques Demy, who couldn't complete a film based on his childhood memories due to illness. They took it upon themselves to create this film, described as an exploration of intimate close-ups and memories, blending fiction and reality. This project underscores their connection and shared history with Demy. Despite the arduous circumstances, their love, family, and work brought fulfillment even in the face of loss.

  • 00:20:00 - 00:25:53

    Expressing a dedication to marginal subjects and individuals, such as squatters and the courageous, the speaker underscores a passion to share these stories through documentaries. Partnering with artist J.R., they emphasize capturing and sharing personal stories via large-scale images, focusing on empathy and direct engagement over politics. Their film "Faces Places" embodies this approach, highlighting the power of imagination and communal connection, with art seen as a liberating force.

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Mind Map

Mind Map

Faqs

  • What is the main topic of the presentation?

    The main topic is the concept of "inspiration" and its role in creativity and sharing.

  • Who inspired the speaker in 1967, and what resulted from it?

    Yanko Varda, a family member and painter, inspired the speaker, leading to the creation of a film after a meeting in San Francisco.

  • What kind of paintings influenced the speaker's film 'Cléo from 5 to 7'?

    The speaker was inspired by Hans Baldung Grien's paintings of beautiful women and skeletons, symbolizing life's fragility and beauty.

  • How did encounters at a farmer's market lead to a documentary?

    Observations of people gleaning discarded goods at a farmer's market inspired the documentary 'The Gleaners and I'.

  • Who was Jacques Demy, and how did he influence the speaker's work?

    Jacques Demy was the speaker's husband, a director whose childhood memories inspired a film after he fell too ill to make it himself.

  • What is 'Faces Places' about?

    'Faces Places' is a film about connecting with people, capturing their stories and images, made by the speaker and artist J.R.

  • How does the speaker perceive art and its impact on life and creativity?

    The speaker sees art as nourishing life, with the power of imagination and freedom in creation being essential elements.

  • What drives the speaker to continue creating?

    The speaker continues creating due to motivation, inspiration, and a desire for creation, viewing these as essential to life.

  • What significance do everyday events hold in the speaker's work?

    Everyday events, such as a scene at a farmer's market, can inspire profound creative projects and documentaries.

  • What role does sharing play in the speaker's work?

    Sharing is described as more interesting than anything else, acting as a bridge between the filmed people and the audience.

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  • 00:00:00
  • 00:00:04
  • 00:00:10
  • 00:00:16
  • 00:00:19
    Hello.
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    Inspiration is my subject.
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    Not the physical action of breathing
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    and -- not --
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    the charming romantic muses coming to whisper
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    in the ear of a poet.
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    No.
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    I'm speaking about a strong word, "inspiration,"
  • 00:00:41
    which goes with "creation" and "sharing."
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    Those are the words who have been in the middle of my working life.
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    Look -- look at that box.
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    It's full of DVDs of all my films and other things
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    60 years of creation.
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    Not even 4 pounds.
  • 00:01:02
  • 00:01:04
    It's like nothing.
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    It's like nothing.
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    This -- you can have it.
  • 00:01:08
  • 00:01:11
    So... it could be the end
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    I could be finished. I could be like, "I'm going to retire."
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    but -- it's not.
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    I felt, "I should not retire."
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    So what keeps me on?
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    It's motivation; inspiration; desire of creating.
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    Well, it hasn't stopped.
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    So... we don't know exactly.
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    But what I know is that desire is the essence of life.
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    Inspiration is the essence of creating.
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    Of creation.
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    So how does it come? You know... It can be vague things invading the brain
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    It could be some thoughts. And sometimes it's just -- an emergency.
  • 00:01:56
    I have to tell you a story.
  • 00:01:57
    This is in 1967. I'm in San Francisco. There is a film festival
  • 00:02:03
    and Tom Luddy said to me, "There is a man named Varda. He is a painter in Sausalito --
  • 00:02:09
    we should go and meet him."
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    Well, we went.
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    and he was a man...Tom introduced me to that man
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    beautiful hippie-type long hair, big pants, loving, loving look
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    and he said he was a real cousin of my father, so we were family.
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    And there was love at the first sight - to simplify it
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    We were so happy to meet and I was impressed.
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    And I thought,
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    "Well, I have to capture that! I should make a film right away."
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    This is Wednesday. And I know I have to leave on Monday.
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    I call a distributor called Greensfelder, I say, "Look, I need a 35-millimeter camera, film stock."
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    And brought me to David Myers -- known DP -- and we started to shoot on Friday.
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    We shot, you know, Yanco [Varda] -- his paintings, the house what was around,
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    and on Saturday he invited friends --everybody spoke about what he was doing
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    and on Sunday he invited young people and some animals to go in a little boat
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    and he went to sail on the Bay.
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    And then I did some white sound -- in English and in French
  • 00:03:29
    So the thing is that, when I filmed, I thought already -- the kind of editing I wanted to do
  • 00:03:39
    Because I knew I wanted to tell the meeting
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    But not just tell the meeting
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    I should express the excitement, the surprise, the joy that happened
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    so I did what I did and I succeeded to do a baroque editing
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    and you will see that.
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  • 00:05:32
  • 00:05:37
    It is true that I loved that meeting and Yanko became an inspiration for me
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    like Picasso. I never met Picasso but I was so impressed by the way he could
  • 00:05:48
    reinvent his own art every five years. Changing, inventing.
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    And other artists also like Calder -- I loved Calder.
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    Those artists inspire us.
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    We need, you know --
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    I think art feeds us. That's the way I feel.
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    but sometimes
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    it's more simple things that inspired me
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    it's more simple things that inspired me -- like everyday life.
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    You know, this is in 2000.
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    It was the end of a farmer's market. And the vendor -- the farmer
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    were putting their boxes and baskets
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    back in the truck.
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    and the city cleaners
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    with their, you know, their plastic, green brooms, were waiting.
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    And I could see people coming. Young and old people
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    bending their bodies to get something on the floor.
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    and what was left, you know?
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    Some salad some boxes of eggs, some eggs were broken,
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    so the vendor left the box -- fruits not very in good shape -- different things.
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    And I was very impressed. A sentence came in my mind right away, it said
  • 00:07:04
    "They will eat what we throw away."
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    And it became... I started to think, "I should do something about that."
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    I should find out who is gleaning
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    where, what can be gleaned
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    in the fields, in the cities. In the cities, mostly the garbage cans.
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    and in the field: corn, you know, apples and potatoes. So that's how I started the
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    documentary called "Les glaneurs et la glaneuse"
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    In English: The Gleaners and I
  • 00:09:30
    I was impressed by the beauty of these odd potatoes
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    The heart-shaped potatoes became a very important feeling that, you know,
  • 00:09:40
    that's the way you look at things that make them beautiful
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    And
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    I also thought of another more typical way of discussing beauty
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    you know, the classical
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    the beautiful face of a beautiful woman.
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    This is Corinne Marchand who acted as Cléo in my film "Cléo from 5 to 7."
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    This is in 1961.
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    And the time was very strange because in the late 50s and the late 60s
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    There were difficult things. There was the Algerian War and there was a very general feeling
  • 00:10:24
    of being afraid of cancer -- like a fear for everybody. And I thought cancer should be a subject.
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    And I thought, I should tell the story of a woman expecting a medical result.
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    She's afraid to have cancer. She's afraid to die.
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    and I wrote the story of the ninety minutes of her expecting those results.
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    I was near her, trying to understand her feeling,
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    trying to go, really go with her.
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    but there was something which was more complicated for me.
  • 00:11:03
    I had a secret inspiration.
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    And sometimes it's a painting. and I've been very inspired by a painting
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    from Hans Baldung Grien
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    This is 1500.
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    And he used to do these beautiful women with skeletons.
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    This one pulls her hair
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    while speaking to her here.
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    And it was, for me, the carnal beauty
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    and the dryness of the skeleton. Flesh and bones.
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    and that image was in me -- like a metaphor of the story of Cléo
  • 00:11:39
    Sometimes I had the postcard with me.
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    Put it on the wall where we were shooting.
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    you know the pressure on Cléo.
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    the pressure of death is strong.
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    and I wanted to understand what she felt and
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    understand how she will be
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    as a beautiful singer
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    attacked even by the world of the song.
  • 00:12:01
  • 00:15:31
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    But you see even in a fiction film
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    I love to have part of documentary.
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    That was true.
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    That's the way that man was doing and other people in the street...
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    because I'm very interested in real people.
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    That's why I do documentaries, among other things
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    You know, it's not the power of truth, but the truth is very interesting.
  • 00:16:01
    It's very ... it's attaching ...it's difficult, you know.
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    And most of the time
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    I tried to grab what life would inspire -- a documentary.
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    One day
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    I was pushed into a very sudden experience.
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    It happened because
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    the wonderful director for Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Jacques Demy,
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    who also was my husband,
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    was sick.
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    Very sick.
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    And he was writing his memories
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    the memories of his childhood
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    and he would show me the pages every other day
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    and he said, "I would like to do the film,
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    but I don't have the strength to do it.
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    Would you like to do it?
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    So I said I will do a film
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    from his memories.
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    So I felt I entered into his head to remember
  • 00:16:54
    I've shared the same time of the war. I've shared the bombing
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    I know, you know, where we're
  • 00:16:59
    trying to play as children
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    but I was not interested in my memories
  • 00:17:04
    but his memories during the war
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    So when I did the film, I understood I had two concerns
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    One was to be near him -- as near as possible
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    In the cinema language, I would have to do
  • 00:17:21
    close up -- almost macro filming --
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    and I wanted to get that the camera would be near him
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    get the substance, get the texture of his hair, texture of his skin
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    the texture of his eye
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    and on the other hand -- that was a part of the fiction
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    Was it fiction about his childhood?
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    And how during this difficult time, he was a young boy who
  • 00:18:12
    had a very early vocation.
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    And how -- alone in his attic -- he started
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    to make animated films.
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    His wish was to learn about cinema.
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    He wished to go into film school
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    But he was doing his own work alone.
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    There is a little excerpt on his attic:
  • 00:19:41
  • 00:19:43
    You know, I was impressed by that early vocation
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    and Jacques became a wonderful director
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    but at the end of our shooting, he passed away.
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    It has been a difficult time
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    and my life has been fulfilled with love, family, a lot of work
  • 00:20:01
    and sometimes bitches also.
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    It's difficult to say that I've felt that have done a lot of work
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    and I became known but in the margin.
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    I have been always interested in people in the margin
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    and some of my documentaries are related to what I will I say...
  • 00:20:24
    -- sqatters, gleaners, poor people --
  • 00:20:29
    anonymous, courageous, righteous, gentile people saving Jewish people during the war --
  • 00:20:38
    and we owe them love.
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    You know, so I took some time to do these documentaries about those people
  • 00:20:45
    that I want to share; I want to make people share
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    And then I feel sometimes I am
  • 00:20:50
    a go-between the people I have filmed and the audiences
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    because sharing is more interesting than anything.
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    And I was lucky to meet recently J.R. -- an artist and a photographer
  • 00:21:09
    and we decided together
  • 00:21:12
    to do the same thing we like -- you know, empathy for people.
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    Trying to catch the best of them.
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    Listening to them
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    and making big images of them on the wall
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    And all these people were people out of power.
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    And we never spoke politics,
  • 00:21:30
    we want to do person-to-person.
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    Share what could be understood
  • 00:21:36
    when we speak candidly to people.
  • 00:21:38
    So we did that film
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    It's called Faces Places; en français: Visages Villages
  • 00:21:45
    And the way we did it was that
  • 00:21:48
    these basic, big images
  • 00:21:50
    and we did it because we were traveling
  • 00:21:53
    and we had been so, so friendly at first sight
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    We travelled in his magical truck.
  • 00:22:00
    and maybe it's around here.
  • 00:22:02
    It's a truck in which there is a lab so you enter to have a little photo
  • 00:22:07
    you go out, you get a poster and if you want to paste it, you do it.
  • 00:22:10
    So we went there and during the the road movie time, we learn to know each other better,
  • 00:22:19
    discover each other
  • 00:22:20
    just 50 years of difference of age, but we got along so well
  • 00:22:26
    that age was not a problem for knowing or understanding.
  • 00:22:30
    And I just thought my age inspired him.
  • 00:22:34
    It was interesting -- the fact that I look not very well, my eyes are weak, I cannot go up the stairs
  • 00:22:42
    And he started to take pictures of me -- photos--- of pieces of me.
  • 00:22:48
    I didn't know what he wanted to do with it but I allowed him to do so
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    So there is an excerpt and you will see what he did with my pieces of body
  • 00:22:58
    but meanwhile, you see, I was expressing, explaining, to workers in a factory
  • 00:23:04
    what was our project; what was the Utopia of our project?
  • 00:23:09
    So there is that scene
  • 00:25:36
    Power of imagination. Freedom in creation. That's what is art.
  • 00:25:43
Tags
  • Inspiration
  • Creativity
  • Documentary
  • Art
  • Film
  • Motivation
  • Life
  • Sharing
  • Personal Stories
  • Empathy