La Pointe-Courte: from Photographs to Film

Agnès Varda had a special attachment to Sète. She considered Sète her home after taking refuge there as a teenager during World War II, and she returned there every year until the early 1960s. 

An amateur photographer starting in 1947 and later a professional, she used her Rolleiflex to capture friends, sailboats, and the docks of this southern city, as well as the boat races on its canals… and soon the ferries and fishermen of la Pointe Courte, that working-class neighborhood on the Thau Lagoon—the very setting for her first film, shot in 1954.

Browsing through Agnès Varda’s contact sheets offers insight into her journey as a photographer. Exploring the archive thus becomes an investigation. Comparing the roughly 800 shots taken in Sète—buried within the vast body of her photographic work—with the meticulous selection the young woman undertook as early as 1953 to prepare for her film reveals her vision. These are not set or on-location photographs, but rather images that predated the film’s conception or contributed to its development. These reference and location-scouting photographs, compiled across nine contact sheets, inspired her to create scenes, atmospheres, and even static shots. Her favorite subjects and motifs are further confirmed by the rediscovery of prints from that era or made later, which reflect her preferences.

Alternating between a graphic and realistic style, Agnès Varda produced a radical film that did not go unnoticed by discerning film buffs and critics of the time. Many praise the originality of its screenplay and, above all, the boldness of its director, known for being the official photographer of the Avignon Festival and the Théâtre National Populaire. Made on a shoestring budget, La Pointe Courte displays an artistic independence that breaks with the conventions of the cinema of its time, to the point of being hailed as a precursor to the New Wave.

With her first photography exhibition in June in her courtyard on Rue Daguerre (Paris 14th arrondissement) and the filming of her first movie that summer, the year 1954 marked a turning point for Varda, highlighting the tenuous link between these two forms of expression and foreshadowing a unique body of work.

↘︎ Text by Carole Sandrin