Visages Villages
French master Agnès Varda collaborates with mysterious street artist JR in this wondrous travelogue, in which the duo travel through small villages in the French countryside and immortalize the faces of those they meet in immense public murals.
Agnès Varda makes films alive with curiosity and playfulness. Now in her eighties, she is the world’s most youthful filmmaker. Her latest nonfiction film is an inspired collaboration with JR, the mysterious French street artist. Like many of Varda’s works, VISAGES VILLAGES is a kind of travelogue in which the wonder of each locale visited is only as potent as the populace whose existence affects it.
The modus operandi is simple: Varda and JR roam from place to place in JR’s truck, which is decorated to resemble a camera. In each place they visit, they meet people – coal miners, cheese makers, a Herculean farmer – and JR creates immense monochromatic portraits of them. Our endearing duo then affixes these portraits to various edifices. The landscape Varda and JR traverse becomes a record of encounters.