Shadow Self: On Agnès Varda's Documenteur

Saturday 14:30
The Chopin House
2024, 7 min., English

Director: Sadia Quraeshi Shepard

In Shadow Self: On Agnès Varda’s Documenteur, I blend film history and analysis and autoethnography, re-editing and remixing scenes from Documenteur, and inserting original footage and silhouettes to echo and engage with Varda’s strategies. One of the ongoing questions that guides this video essay concerns how, and why, we are drawn to the films that speak to us. What is the ineffable process of choosing our objects of study and admiration?

Sadia Shepard is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Wesleyan University. Her documentary films have screened at the Sundance Film Festival, LA Independent Film Festival, and others. Recent work includes video essays Shadow Self: On Agnès Varda’s Documenteur and Dear Barbara Loden: Reconsidering Wanda (1970), which appears in [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies.

International Film Festival in Marienbad

Shadow Self: On Agnès Varda's Documenteur

Saturday 14:30
The Chopin House
2024, 7 min., English

Director: Sadia Quraeshi Shepard

The Marienbad Film Festival is an international film festival focusing on works of an experimental nature, marginal forms of cinema, contemporary moving image, and artistic & challenging films. It creates an opportunity for independent and experimental filmmakers and artists using the moving image to meet, but also aims to make more challenging films accessible to a wider audience.

The Marienbad Film Festival is an international film festival focusing on works of an experimental nature, marginal forms of cinema, contemporary moving image, and artistic & challenging films. It creates an opportunity for independent and experimental filmmakers and artists using the moving image to meet, but also aims to make more challenging films accessible to a wider audience.