Presents
Screening
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9
6
9
Dir. Agnes Varda
Feat. Viva Hoffman and Dir. Alex Auder
Rustic Theatre
Saturday 21st September
2.30 – 4.45 PM
We pay homage to the late, great Agnes Varda with a sublime classic form her California period, accompanied by the films star and countercultural icon Viva!
LIONS LOVE (…AND LIES)
Agnès Varda’s exquisitely restored inquiry into Los Angeles counterculture is set in a rented house in the sun-soaked Hollywood Hills. Provocatively a woman and two men: Viva, of Warhol Factory fame, and James Rado and Gerome Ragni, who created and starred in the rock musical Hair, delight in one another’s bodies while musing on love, stardom, and politics. They are soon joined by another legend of underground cinema Shirley Clarke, playing herself as well as functioning as a surrogate for Varda.
Lions Love (. . . and Lies) is a meta-cinematic exploration of the alternating currents of playfulness and tragedy that typified late-sixties America.
VIVAVIVA
Dir. Alex Auder & Nick Nehez
An intimate portrait of Warhol Superstar Viva, as she prepares for a gallery show of her watercolour paintings in Santa Barbara, CA. In this often hilarious, sometimes touching, short documentary, Alex and her sister Gaby Hoffmann must contend with Viva’s infamous histrionic personality. It’s a road trip, of sorts, with one of America’s counter cultural icons.
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DIR. BIO. AGNES VARDA
Belgian-born Varda has been called the mother of the French New Wave. Her first feature, La Pointe Courte (1956), which she wrote and directed with no formal training, is considered to be the film that inspired the movement. Varda has experimented with all forms of filmmaking from shorts to documentaries to narrative feature films during her more than 60-year career, including such works as the New Wave classic Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), Le Bonheur, Vagabond, her autobiographical documentary The Beaches of Agnès and her most recent work, Faces Places.
Agnès Varda may be lauded as a pioneering member of the Left Bank, but her work is surprisingly accessible. She was an endlessly curious filmmaker whose interest in the margins of society and female subjectivity, together with her vocational background in photography, resulted in a playful and fiercely political body of work.
VIVA HOFFMAN
Viva Hoffman is one of Andy Warhol’s superstars. He gave her the name Viva before the release of her first motion picture. An early pioneer of video art, she appeared in and co-created many of the famous Warhol films, among them The Loves of Ondine, Tub Girls, and Nude Restaurant. Viva is the author of two books: Superstar, an insider’s look at the Factory, and The Baby, a novel incorporating video art. She also wrote for and edited a variety of publications, including Vanity Fair and the Village Voice. She is the mother of two children and lives in Palm Springs, California, where she paints.
ALEX AUDER
Alex Auder, whom the New York Times recently hailed as “Yoga’s Instagram’s Provocateur,” was raised in New York’s Chelsea Hotel, where she lived with her mother, the Warhol Superstar Viva, and her sister, the actress Gaby Hoffmann. Besides being hailed as one of America’s “most influential” yoga teachers,
Alex is an actress (you can find her as a recurring character on HBO’s High Maintenance), writer (currently working on a memoir about growing up in The Chelsea with Viva), and co-collaborator filmmaker with her husband, Nick Nehez.
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