Agnes Varda season at The Auteurs

I just got back from the Glasgow Film Theatre after seeing three short films by Agnes Varda and when I checked my emails there was one from the Auteurs about this season of Varda's films all available to view online, for a small cost. The three films which were screened at the GFT tonight are all available and I would highly recommend them - particularly the first one, Salut les Cubains (1963). It's interesting to see that this film was made the year before Soy Cuba (1964). I've only seen snippets from Soy Cuba but watching Varda's film immediately reminded me of it just because I've seen so little footage of Cuba from that time. Varda's film came across to me as being very positive about the Cuban revolution and Castro and I'd be interested to see Soy Cuba, a Russian/Cuban collaboration, to see what the take is in that film. I loved Varda's film, it's filled with wonderful characters and music and discusses really interesting events and developments in Cuban social and cultural history. I was particularly impressed with the way it is composed of still images linked by narration and themes, and really liked the way the film was organised which I think I'm going to find is a theme with her work as I found the structure of the other two films I saw similarly pleasing - the other films were, Ulysse and Ydessa, the Bears, and etc.

Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary

I recently found out, via another blog, about a new website set up by the National Film Board of Canada. It's called 'Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary' and it's a treasure trove of wonderful short clips of directors talking about various aspects of documentary film making . There's so many clips that I've only really scratched the surface so far but personal favourites include; Eduardo Coutinho, Interviewing: telling it for the first time, where he discusses why he doesn't ever like to meet interviewees prior to the interview; Kevin Macdonald, Jennings, Morris and Maysles, talking about the impact of these three directors on him; Claire Simon, The French Nouvelle Vague, where she talks about, amongst other things, the work of Agnès Varda, a French documentary film maker whom I had never heard of before but who I am now really looking forward to finding out more about; and Werner Herzog, I memorize the entire footage, where he talks about, surprisingly enough, how he memorises his entire film for as long as necessary then forgets it when the film is finished.

I really like the way the website is set out as well. it's really easy to use, visually appealing and the search options work really well. You can search by name of film maker, by topic, and by just browsing over the photographs of each film maker that make up the home page.