Slideshow
NAUSICAA
France, 1971
Directed by Agnès Varda
Starring France Dougnac, Myriam Boyer
In French with English subtitles
Approx. 99 min.
Varda, whose father was Greek, responded to the country’s 1967 right-wing military junta with an ambitious project, a blend of fiction and documentary sections, with a narrative about an art-history student in Paris, documentary testimony by refugees, and a personal essay narrated by Varda about her family history. For mysterious reasons having to do with the French government’s connection to the new Greek government, the film was confiscated and never finished. A workprint of the film was preserved by the Royal Cinematheque of Belgium; that is what is presented here.
Presented with support from The George Fasel Memorial Fund for Classic French Cinema
Reviews
“There are at least three movies in the surviving cut of NAUSICAA; a call to arms (severe, burning with urgency), a coming of age story (digressive, melancholic), and an essay film (bittersweet withdrawn)... The cut becomes an archive of the tones that ring across Varda’s body of work. One moment it sinks into a dreamy sadness. The next it stiffens its muscles, ready to fight.”
– The Nation