Feminist Representations In Varda’s Documentary Films

Agnes Varda was a famous French film director,screenwriter and producer of the twentieth century.She was also the only female director of the French New Wave movement.With the rise of the French New Wave came the emergence of the Left Bank School in the late 1950 s and early 1960 s.Varda was a key member of the Left Bank school,which is why she is also known as the "grandmother of the New Wave".She became a feminist at the age of 19 and has been writing about women in her films ever since.She participated in the feminist movement and documented its courageous and passionate women with her camera.Documentaries make up half of Varda’s work,and even in her dramas she intersperses a great deal of documentary images,deliberately creating a swing between reality and fiction.This is why documentary studies are such an essential part of Varda’s work.The first part of this paper provides a general overview of the history of Western feminism and Varda’s feminist experience and her involvement in the feminist movement.The second part analyses the creative characteristics of Varda’s documentaries in the early,middle and late stages of her work.In the third part,six feminist works are selected from Varda’s documentaries to explore feminism from both the physical and psychological aspects of the female body.The fourth section concludes with an analysis of the most distinctive features of Varda’s feminism.This essay attempts to contribute to the study of Varda’s feminism through the above analysis and sorting.I hope that it will be referred to and corrected.