Women should never be content being invisible.

This year, the International Film Festival of Rotterdam promised to shed light on storytelling that aims to connect. With this in mind, the festival hosted the first international retrospective dedicated to German director, documentarian, and film historian Katja Raganelli, showing several short documentaries she originally made for television. Raganelli centers female filmmakers in her documentaries, educating the masses and inspiring curiosity towards the creators and their legacies. She is known for portraits like I Am Wanda (1980) and Longing for Women: Dorothy Arzner (1983). However, the first of many subjects in Raganelli’s documentaries was Agnès Varda. In 1977, Katja portrayed the grand dame of the French Nouvelle Vague in Les Femmes Sont de Nature Creatives: Agnès Varda, also known as Women Are Naturally Creative.

During the shooting of Varda’s L’une chant, l’autre pas (1977), Varda invited Raganelli into both her actual home on Rue Daguerre and the constructed home on the film set. Varda shares her approach towards filmmaking, creating a safe and free environment to play in, centered on the need to include women in film. During that time period, female roles were tailored to support male characters. But Varda emphasizes female subjectivity, both on- and off-screen. She wishes to represent reality through filmmaking, which means the inclusion of female directors, writers, actresses, producers, camera-operators, and editors. The visibility of women allowed them to be more than objects of male desire. Varda narrates her process, describing how she likes to have her children around as much as possible, and the subjectivity of her female characters.

Varda liberates herself from the constraints of concrete plans and storyboards. Instead, she takes inspiration from light and space. For instance, Raganelli films Varda’s approach to framing in L’une chant, l’autre pas, and the possibilities created by the set. Raganelli greatly admires the spontaneity and determination with which Varda created her films. She embraces conquering the unknown, trusting the people involved, but most of all, allowing the film to form itself. Ragnelli’s portrait makes clear how Agnès Varda became the inspiration she remains today, a woman to look up to in the grand scheme of film history.

Similarly to Varda’s spontaneous attitude to filmmaking, Raganelli insists on coming prepared and well-read in order to portray her subjects, but also welcomes spontaneity in the moment. She emphasizes the need to meet them as they are, as people. Her interview style consists of simple questions rather than an intellectual approach to film techniques and detailed philosophical interviews. Raganelli likes to let the conversation flow into talks about the nature of reality. While making Les Femmes Sont de Nature Creatives: Agnès Varda, Raganelli learned to become intimate, especially in documentaries. One does not have to be an acclaimed critic but should try to be personal and open.

Having conversations on a human level, Varda shares her views on motherhood, financial insecurity, livelihood, and the merging of family and filmmaking. For instance, Varda’s five year old son Matthieu, comes in during one of the interviews. Varda lets him interrupt and admits she cherishes this moment because it shows the reality of motherhood. Male filmmakers have their wives or nannies look after their children off-camera, but they do not show this reality. For Varda, this moment reveals no division between filmmaking and domestic family living. Even so, she wishes her children were more

involved, but only if those moments were spontaneous. Ultimately, this is what Varda and Raganelli seek: a closer image of reality.

In the 1960s, producers tried to uphold an estrangement of female creatives due to a misogynistic lack of trust in female filmmakers. After the screening, Raganelli recounts from personal experience how it was common practice to have a male director on call as backup for a female director, in case she would fail in her duties. In Women Are Naturally Creative, Varda states the only way to make the films she wanted was to produce them herself, even when this meant continuous financial risks. Financing came from government institutes, creative friends, and colleagues. For some films, Varda pre-sold to distributors before shooting them. Raganelli experienced the same issues with financing. However, she saw an opportunity whenever a female filmmaker was interested in collaborating on a documentary. A positive side to this independent way of filmmaking was a particular flexibility in her practice. Being a female filmmaker in the 60s and 70s was a risk. Raganelli and Varda represent the importance of visibility of female filmmakers. Women should never be content being invisible.

Alongside Raganelli’s portrait of Agnès Varda, IFFR programmed Varda’s Lópéra-mouffe (1958), Résponses de femmes : Notre corps, notre sexe (1975), and Ulysse (1983). In the three short films, Varda seeks to visualize the subjectivity of humanity, womanhood, and memories.