Agnès Varda’s Ethics and Strategies

Abstract This article and the video essay are about Agnès Varda’s love, forgiveness and standing one’s ground through at times a strategy of omission and absence. The article also aims to suggest that her filmmaking was conceptually rooted in Lacanian psychoanalysis whilst retaining its commitment to social justice and feminism at all times. In my own work, I have suggested that in order to subvert the patriarchy, it is at times necessary to be ‘nasty’ (Piotrowska Piotrowska, The nasty woman and the neo-femme fatale in contemporary cinema, Routledge, London, 2019; Piotrowska, Agnieszka. 2014, 2023. Psychoanalysis and Ethics in Documentary Film, London and New York: Routledge). This is not the case with the work and life of Agnès Varda, whose output I argue is characterised by boldness, rigour and care. This article is linked to the video essay which inspired the article and the thinking behind it. The video essay, the original version of which was presented at the plenary session of the Visible Evidence conference in 2019 at the University of Southern California, UD, has the style of a music video and focuses on love and loss.