Daguerréotypes
Agnès Varda
Daguerréotypes is not a film about the rue Daguerre, but a small part of the rue Daguerre, between numbers 70 and 90. It is a modest and local document on a few shopkeepers, an attentive view of the silent majority.
Screenplay : Agnès Varda
Image : Nurith Aviv, William Lubtchansky
Editing : Andrée Choty, Gordon Swire
Image : Nurith Aviv, William Lubtchansky
Editing : Andrée Choty, Gordon Swire
Production : Ciné Tamaris, Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (INA), Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF)
Distribution: Ciné-Tamaris
Distribution: Ciné-Tamaris
The German channel ZDF commissioned Agnès Varda to make a documentary and she took the opportunity to cross the rue Daguerre, where she lived, and meets a couple. He runs a sort of general store, and she works alongside him. Her sad face, her strangely absent air is the first portrait in this series on neighbours and their shops. Filmed using a Super16 camera, Daguerréotypes is also constructed around a show by the magician Mystag, which brings together all the shopkeepers for an evening of life and laughter. Varda's camera is patient and observes these moments of real life with feeling that this little world is likely to disappear. Broadcast in France in 1976, the film was very successful and went around the world, forever changing these unknown shopkeepers into international stars.