Over the first months of the pandemic, the internet filled with streaming playlists, Zoom masterpieces, and classic revivals. The litany of canceled or virtual film festivals had become the new normal, with everything from SXSW to Cannes to Telluride called off or moved entirely online, and then evolving into hybrids or customized drive-ins.
Film Quarterly can hopefully, with your help, contribute to the imperative to provoke, build, and revitalize the field of film and media studies beyond the acceptable and parochial, to push it to aim higher and think more creatively. Surely this is a time that demands not retreat, but the imagination to push forward and unsettle old assumptions. Where are the films and television and web series that can do that? FQ will keep looking, stay on the prowl, keep alert, and continue to bring reports and salutations, analyses and revelations, back to its readers.
After too many editorials penned in the shadow of the 2016 election, all suffused with a mix of nostalgia and dread, perhaps it’s time to change the lens. As a grumpy daughter, I used to complain that my anxious mother could always find the cloud around any silver lining. Consider this editorial, then, an attempt to break with such attitudes and appreciate the silver wherever it may be found. And since dire times can inspire great writing, Film Quarterly should have ample cause for celebration in future issues, too, as the news out of Washington DC shows no sign of turning any less dire—and, in fact, worsened with the Senate hearings in the fall and the confirmation of a certain Supreme Court justice (no, I will not include his name) in defiance of women’s testimonies and an unjust process grounded in brutalism and misogyny. The state of the country, the state of government, the state of cinema: these are not unrelated entities.
In this wide-ranging yet intimate interview, the iconic French filmmaker Agnès Varda reflects on her career over tea with Film Quarterly contributing editor Joan Dupont. Varda discusses the themes of feminism and freedom that unite her films, from Le bonheur (1965) to Vagabond (1985) along with her enduring interest in sharing the stories of others, as she did most recently in collaboration with the visual artist JR in Faces Places (2017). Over the course of several conversations, Varda shares insights into her methods and obsessions, her enduring vision and constant reinventions.