I know people could tell incredible stories. People have been in concentration camps, or women being raped, or a man going to war and not recovering from it. People have been robbed and beaten. A lot of people have had strong events in their life, which I didn't.

Agnes Varda

Categorized in : War Men Strong

In my films I always wanted to make people see deeply. I don't want to show things, but to give people the desire to see.

Agnes Varda

movie giving people

If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes.

Agnes Varda

landscape ifs people

The tool of every self-portrait is the mirror. You see yourself in it. Turn it the other way, and you see the world .

Agnes Varda

portraits mirrors self

This is all you need in life: a computer, a camera, and a cat.

Agnes Varda

cameras cat needs

You are always in the world. Even in Vagabond. I am not on the road, I am not eating nothing. But in a way we all have a Mona. We all have inside ourselves a woman who walks alone on the road. In all women there is something in revolt that is not expressed.

Agnes Varda

vagabonds way world

I'm still fighting. I don't know how much longer, but I'm still fighting a struggle, which is to make cinema alive and not just make another film.

Agnes Varda

cinema fighting struggle

Humor is such a strong weapon, such a strong answer. Women have to make jokes about themselves, laugh about themselves, because they have nothing to lose.

Agnes Varda

humor strong laughing

Hands are the tool of the painter, the artist.

Agnes Varda

tools artist hands

I'm not interested in seeing a film just made by a woman - not unless she is looking for new images.

Agnes Varda

film ghouls made

When I started I did not know I wanted to be a filmmaker. I started - I made a film. Then when I finished I said, Oh my god it's so beautiful - I should be a filmmaker!

Agnes Varda

film should beautiful

I wanted to speak strongly about feminism in my life, since it's been a struggle.

Agnes Varda

feminism speak struggle

When I started my first film, there were three women directors in France. Their films were OK, but I was different. It's like when you start to jump and you put the pole very high - you have to jump very high. I thought, I have to use cinema as a language.

Agnes Varda

three different directors

I didn't go to film school. I was never an assistant or trainee on a film. I had not seen all those cameras. So I think it gave me a lot of freedom.

Agnes Varda

cameras school thinking

I tried to find a language for the film - not just telling stories. I picked the Picasso painting because it said more than I could explain. I need images, I need representation which deals in other means than reality. We have to use reality but get out of it. That's what I try to do all the time.

Agnes Varda

trying mean reality

To share a lot of ideas - not ideas - emotions, a way of looking at people, a way of looking at life. If it can be shared, it means there is a common denominator.

Agnes Varda

mean people ideas

Good cinema is good cinema. It makes you feel like you need to work. Just yesterday I saw a good film, but even if I'd seen a bad one, I'd feel, "Oh my god, what a bad job, I can do better."

Agnes Varda

yesterday jobs needs

An old woman I loved very much when I was young - the wife of Jean Villard - she's just reciting poetry all the time, which is beautiful because it means she went back to the world of poetry that she loved when she was young. That's all she does - she almost doesn't recognize her children, but she recites Valéry and Baudelaire. So what? We're the ones who are suffering. She's not.

Agnes Varda

beautiful mean children

I was nineteen and I put a bowl on and I said, Cut around! Because it was not the fashion at the time when I did that hairdo - and I kept it all my life!

Agnes Varda

nineteen fashion cutting

It's nice to think that we have in ourselves the energy. It's somewhere, but it's sleeping sometimes. I try to wake it up when I need it.

Agnes Varda

nice sleep thinking

I call [ordinary people] real people, because they have in themselves an incredible treasure - stories, a way of speaking, a way of sharing, an innocence and a perversity which I find very interesting to discover little by little.

Agnes Varda

real people interesting