Cinevardaphoto March 6, 2005

Agn?s Varda's most recent film is an imaginative trilogy. Ydessa, les ours et etc., the first chapter of the project, chronicles a colorful Canadian art collector's strange yet dazzling Teddy Bear Project--an art gallery exhibition of thousands of period photographs featuring the popular stuffed childish toys that once were de rigueur for all households. In Ulysse, part two, Varda revisits an enigmatic portrait photograph she shot in Egypt nearly thirty years earlier. Accompanying her are the photo's subjects. Finally, Salut les Cubains animates a breathtaking montage of over a thousand photographs Varda shot on one of her early expeditions to Cuba. Together, these three short cine-essays comprise a poetic contemplation of the meaning of images in differing contexts over a forty-year period (1964-2004, 96 minutes). Washington premiere