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 VardaThe boundaries between contemporary art and cinema are so rigid. It's unbelievable. The film critics don't know my artwork and the art world doesn't know my films.
Agnes VardaI've always been like this - trying to find adventure where it's still in its first élan - the first spring.
Agnes VardaI wanted to catch the problem of consumption, waste, poor people eating what we throw away, which is a big subject. But I didn't want to become a sociologue, an ethnographe, a serious thinker. I thought I should be free, even in a documentary which has a very serious subject.
Agnes VardaYou 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 VardaI 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 VardaThe mirror is the tool of the one who wants to do a self-portrait. And if you want to make a photo you need a mirror.
Agnes VardaI have respect for literature. If he found the words, if she found the words - this is a book!
Agnes VardaThe freedom he gave himself to work and change shape and change ideas and work all the time with joy, the joy of painting was in [Publo] Picasso, which I found beautiful.
Agnes VardaIt'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 VardaI'm myself - knowing I'm doing a documentary and speaking with the people, telling them I have a bed, that I can eat every day, but I would like to speak to you. And they really gave me wonderful answers. We got along very well without trying to make me look like I'm what I'm not.
Agnes VardaPeople think you are an orphan when you are a child, and don't believe that old people can feel that they are orphans.
Agnes VardaIt's peaceful to think about the family as a group. I totally believe in extended families.
Agnes VardaI 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 VardaI've seen many films, and many beautiful films. And I try to keep a certain level of quality of my films. I don't do commercials, I don't do films pre-prepared by other people, I don't do star system. So I do my own little thing.
Agnes VardaI'm missing some people, you know, and this is not nostalgia. I miss them. This is melancholy.
Agnes VardaThe tool of every self-portrait is the mirror. You see yourself in it. Turn it the other way, and you see the world .
Agnes VardaI think people should be different. I love people who don't go by the rule that you have to be careful because you're old, you have to do this and that, you have to eat this and that.
Agnes VardaI try to do nothing. I drink rosemary when I have a lot of work to do. People take coffee, they take speed, whatever. I take rosemary.
Agnes VardaI was a photographer first.I worked alone. I did it my way as much as I could. I have been sort of courageous about doing things, because I didn't think I should do less than my brothers.
Agnes VardaThere is a song of Gainsbourg that Jane Birkin sang, and the words are beautiful in French. It says, "Le jeu et les moi." It's impossible to translate, because it has a very nice sound. It sounds so lovely in French. So I took that because it was the subject: I and myself and myself and I. Which is, in a way, boring, because it is a contradiction.
Agnes VardaI go back to many films that I really love. Some Bresson, some Godard of the early times, the Cassavetes of those years I love. And the early Wim Wenders. But my own films I don't watch, unless I need them.
Agnes VardaThe first exhibition [Publo Picasso] was organized by the communist party - because of his position during the war and all that.
Agnes VardaI've changed my approach to people and to filming because of the new equipment, which is important.
Agnes VardaTo change history is very slow. The first two times I came to the States - black people didn't have the right to vote.
Agnes VardaIt's interesting work for me to tell my life, as a possibility for other people to relate it to themselves - not so much to learn about me.
Agnes VardaIn 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 VardaI 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 VardaI don't try to make a place in history at all! People put me in the history of cinema because my first film, La pointe-courte, was so ahead of some other filmmakers. Many filmmakers have made resurgent work, and I was just a little ahead of the time.
Agnes VardaI just didn't see films when I was young. I was stupid and naïve. Maybe I wouldn't have made films if I had seen lots of others; maybe it would have stopped me.
Agnes VardaSometimes I say, If I had seen some masterpieces, maybe I wouldn't have dared start. I started very - not innocent, but naïve in a way.
Agnes VardaI don't believe in inspiration that arrives like a bolt from the blue ... It seems to me that the more motivated I am by what I film, the more objectively I film.
Agnes VardaI never fought, I never learned kung fu or boxing, I never went into these sportif competitions. I wouldn't cross the ocean. I think it's ridiculous to take such risk. But look, people love to do that. But I was not afraid of doing things I wished to do. I did not think that woman would be restrained. I never saw that, especially not in filmmaking, where you don't have to be strong.
Agnes VardaI 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 VardaI was eighteen, this was back in '46, so we also had these very frightening images of soldiers in the streets of Paris. So the effect of war, plus my shyness, plus my lack of education - I was afraid of men, really. It changes later, but it took me a certain time to adjust.
Agnes VardaI made a braid because Chinese old people, they say that the God will take you by the hair to join you with - but God didn't take me, so I cut the braid.
Agnes Varda