Like a lot of cinephiles, CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7 represented my introduction to Varda, but it was a 2011 screening of THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS that kickstarted my interest in all of her work. THE GLEANERS AND I was one of the films I caught soon after and it remains a favorite. When I work my way through Criterion’s “Complete Films” boxed set, it will be a pleasure to revisit it.
Bold statement of the day - documentaries, on par, are lesser art forms than conventional films. Not to say some aren't great (I haven't seen this one, so no comment) but pound for pound they don't match up
That's bold indeed. I also disagree strongly with it, though it's plain that documentaries don't get the same level of respect in polls like these (or year-end lists) than "fiction" films do. (I have to put "fiction" in scare quotes here, because the line between what is and isn't "truth" can be a blurry one, often in an exciting way.) My one hang-up, which I expressed in a piece I wrote for The A.V. Club called "If documentaries wants to be treated like movies, they need to behave like them," is that I appreciate filmmakers, Varda among them, who take the nonfiction form as seriously as they do their fiction films. You can certainly fall back on a cookie-cutter approach to docs that's not very stimulating, but there are so many great ones that I would never think of calling it "a lesser art form."
Like a lot of cinephiles, CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7 represented my introduction to Varda, but it was a 2011 screening of THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS that kickstarted my interest in all of her work. THE GLEANERS AND I was one of the films I caught soon after and it remains a favorite. When I work my way through Criterion’s “Complete Films” boxed set, it will be a pleasure to revisit it.
Bold statement of the day - documentaries, on par, are lesser art forms than conventional films. Not to say some aren't great (I haven't seen this one, so no comment) but pound for pound they don't match up
That's bold indeed. I also disagree strongly with it, though it's plain that documentaries don't get the same level of respect in polls like these (or year-end lists) than "fiction" films do. (I have to put "fiction" in scare quotes here, because the line between what is and isn't "truth" can be a blurry one, often in an exciting way.) My one hang-up, which I expressed in a piece I wrote for The A.V. Club called "If documentaries wants to be treated like movies, they need to behave like them," is that I appreciate filmmakers, Varda among them, who take the nonfiction form as seriously as they do their fiction films. You can certainly fall back on a cookie-cutter approach to docs that's not very stimulating, but there are so many great ones that I would never think of calling it "a lesser art form."