Google celebrates...AgnesVarda
The Great film director
FILMS , MUSIC, DRAMA AND ART
Joan
12/14/20233 min read
Did you do a Google search yesterday? If so, you will know that Google were celebrating the great film director Agnes Varda. A well deserved honour for such a versatile and unique photographer, screen writer and director who has created such great films as 'Cléo from 5 to7,' which is set in Paris, 'The Beaches of Agnes,' 'Vagabond,' and a film which I have mentioned in an earlier blog, 'The Gleaners and I.' Her style is unique, and is credited with heralding the French Nouvelle Vague. I feel I cannot let this event pass without noting it in my blog , for although she was born in Belgium, a large part of her belongs to this very region. When she was a teenager she came to live in her mother's home town of Sète , which features in her earliest film 'Pointe Courte' and also her last, 'The Beaches of Agnès.'
If you travel by boat along the broad canal between Sète and the Etang de Thau you will pass under a number of bridges. The last one, Pont Maréchal Foch is a steel lifting bridge which carries the rail link between Bordeaux and Sète. After passing under this bridge you will come to Pointe Courte, a little fishing community which lies at the very end of this canal , and borders the étang, the largest inland sea in France. Agnes Varda's early black and white film 'Pointe Courte' features the local fishing people that lived there and their simple homes in this tale of a marriage under strain. It is a fascinating film and totally unique. But perhaps even more surprising is how this little community has retained its charm and simplicity to this day, even though it is on the edge of a huge sea port, and the main TGV line between France and Spain passes close by. We have moored there in our old Dutch canal going boat, and know just how special it is with its simple wooden fishing huts and traditional fishing boats and nets Although Agnes Varda died in 2019, it is here at Pointe Courte that I feel her unique spirit survives. A well deserved accolade from Google.
But for two weeks every autumn, around the month of October, the normally peaceful setting of Pointe Courte becomes bedlam, and local residents become exasperated. For that is when the daurade royale( or sea bream) which have spent the late summer months fattening in the Etang de Thau( or lagoon) decide to quit the cooling inland waters for the warmer sea. Their route takes them via the Royal Canal to the coast at Sète. At Pointe Courte they pass through a veritable bottleneck. During this massive exodus, the fish are there for the taking, and local fishermen converge on an area of the quay-side, no bigger than 100metres long, and jostle for space. Positions are jealously guarded, and fishermen have often staked their claims by leaving tables, chairs and cool boxes in their chosen position. In 2019 the police moved in and removed these. Fishermen could reclaim their possessions later at the gendarmerie. No-one ever did! Looking at their copious catches, these fishermen should be able to feed their families for months. However it is strictly forbidden for them to sell their fish on the open market, and to that purpose they are instructed to cut a diagonal corner off every fish tail.
