Enter the Vardaverse: Afternoons in Paris

As the grandmother of the French New Wave, filmmaker Agnès Varda’s (1928–2019) influence on cinema history cannot be overstated. Working vigorously and spiritedly until her death at age 90 in 2019, Varda directed some two dozen features and almost as many short films, adapting her style to fit her ever-evolving curiosities and interests over her seven-decade career. For Part 3 of Enter the VardaVerse, which reflects on her place in the museum’s Director’s Inspiration gallery, currently on view in the exhibition Stories of Cinema, we track Varda’s filmmaking through the streets of Paris, where she lived on rue Daguerre for much of her life, and hold a mirror to her contemporaries. Join us on weekends this fall for cinematic getaways in the City of Lights, juxtaposing several of Varda’s rare shorts against classics old and new by the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Bresson, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Pierre Melville, Maurice Pialat, Eric Rohmer, Leos Carax, and other beloved filmmakers who shaped Paris on film in both physical and metaphorical ways.