The Sustainable Legacy of Agnès Varda
Feminist Practice and Pedagogy
Feride Çiçekoglu editor Colleen Kennedy-Karpat editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:21st Apr '22
Should be back in stock very soon
A synthesis of original scholarship and personal reflections on the work of Agnès Varda, which highlights her lasting impact on feminist pedagogy in several disciplines.
Drawing especially on the encounters and relationships that defined her exceptional career, The Sustainable Legacy of Agnès Varda outlines a sustainable legacy for the celebrated director and visual artist. Over nine chapters, it unpacks how creation, connection, and environment form the core of Varda’s artistry, which centers foremost on relationships with her family, with other artists, even with passersby she would meet in her travels around the world.
Also celebrating her feminist legacy, the chapters cover a wide range, from the classic Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) to documentaries The Beaches of Agnès (2008) and Faces Places (2017) as well as selected art installations. The book’s final section is dedicated to teaching Varda’s work; here, ten scholars from around the world consider how Varda’s art and feminist pedagogies offer unique ways to bring crucial concepts into the classroom. By seeking a sustainable praxis to discuss and teach Varda’s work, and by making pedagogical concerns an explicit part of this approach, this book argues that Varda’s insights about the nature of creative work will inspire new generations of viewers and audiences.
The Sustainable Legacy of Agnès Varda constitutes a magnificent critical tribute to the work of a filmmaker who turned cinema into an art of encountering. Arguing that her legacy extends beyond her filmography, through an ethical and political vision of art worth examining, the contributors of this book remained faithful to the memory of a woman and an artist committed to her time. -- Luc Vancheri, Lumière University Lyon 2, France
Throughout the volume, the overall question — how to sustain joy in Varda’s legacy — is met with nuanced and perceptive analysis. The collection offers new perspectives, not least through critique, for example in Jennifer Stob’s illuminating essay on Varda’s formalist feminism, in which she argues that Varda both ‘reveals the patriarchal structure that collapses representational space and the feminine’, and ‘confirms and reproduces its formalist myth’… This collection is an indispensable tool for Varda teachers, scholars, and fans, and it delightfully fulfils the task of sustaining and renewing Varda’s legacy. -- Ros Murray * French Studies *
Inquisitive moving-image artist par excellence, Agnès Varda receives here an expansive and multifaceted treatment, one that matches the range and generosity of her own work. These essays revise and open out our understanding of a cinema that both depicts and embodies sustenance. -- Girish Shambu, Canisius College, Buffalo, USA
In framing its collection of essays in terms of sustainability, The Sustainable Legacy of Agnès Varda offers a timely intervention in feminist criticism in visual studies. Varda’s work lends itself beautifully to these eco-critical analyses, which collectively sustain meticulous attention to Varda’s elaborations of embodiment, space, and place across her oeuvre. -- Sharon Willis, University of Rochester, USA
ISBN: 9781350240902
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 508g
224 pages