The Complete Podcast

Matt and Travis wrap up their Varda journey with a very special guest. Valeria Rotella produced the bible that was used throughout this season: The Complete Films of Agnès Varda from the Criterion Collection. We discuss her own relationship with Varda’s work, her job as a producer for home media, and the box itself – perhaps the best thing Criterion has released to date. We hope you enjoy the conversation and this season! We’ll be back with a new director soon! The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Instagram @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

Varda’s final film is the summation of her career – literally. As with her penultimate work, this documentary was prompted by Varda’s daughter Rosalie, who suggested that Agnès tell her own story rather than have someone tell it for her. We discuss the relative structure of this autobiographical work with the earlier Beaches of Agnès, Varda’s evolving reputation as she moved into the final years of her life, and why you should display proper posture when sitting in the front row. We hope you have enjoyed this journey, and we will have a very special guest for the wrap up episode next month! The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Instagram @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

Varda’s most well-known film from the last two decades of her life, Faces Places is a film collaboration with artist J.R. A warm both of a film, Faces Places is an exploration of the French countryside and the unexpected combination of two very different artists who are nevertheless united in their love of people. Matt and Travis discuss the film’s conventional style – and how unconventional of a description that is for an average Varda film. We also go off on quite a tangent! We hope you enjoy. Referenced on the show: Why Culture Has Come to a Standstill The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Instagram @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

A running theme with Varda’s 21st century work is the unusual nature of its conception and/or execution, and From Here to There plays right into this pattern. Created out of Varda’s own recordings of her travels and encounters with artists of all types throughout the world, this miniseries presents Varda as curious consumer and globe-trotting ambassador for the novel and bold. Matt and Travis discuss the unusual nature of the film and dive into the notion of modern art and Varda’s relationship with it. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Instagram @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

For the 21st episode of season five, Matt and Travis cover one of the most extraordinary autobiographical documentaries in film history, The Beaches of Agnès. We discuss Varda’s love of beaches, her unusual and free-flowing structure, and her uncanny ability to piece it all together in a graceful and intellectually stimulating final package. This is one of Varda’s most complex and popular works, and it was great fun to unpack. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Instagram @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

Varda’s 20th feature is as unusual as her stitched-together 19th. Created as an installation piece and converted into a television special, Some Widows of Noirmoutier is a straightforward yet profoundly moving documentary. In this episode, Matt and Travis discuss this oft-overlooked Varda feature, along with her blossoming visual artist identity and the broader work Varda undertook in the third and final phase of her shifting career. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Instagram @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

Matt and Travis encounter an unusually constructed film: Cinévardaphoto, a set of three shorts stitched together to create a feature that could be shown in theaters and distributed on DVD. The first two of these films, Ulysse and Salut les Cubains, were previously created in the 1980s and 1960s, respectively. We covered these films in episodes 3 and 10, so here we focus on Ydessa. A profile of Ydessa Hendeles and her Teddy Bear exhibit that Varda encountered on a visit to Germany, the film is an interesting mix of profile and Varda’s own complex perspective on the work and the person. I’m not going to lie, we get a little silly here, but I hope you enjoy anyway.

The Complete Varda 18 – The Gleaners and I Matt and Travis move into the 21st century with Varda’s pivotal The Gleaners and I. A massive success upon release in France, Varda’s first digital feature created a media frenzy and helped reenergize the aging filmmaker, catapulting her into the final two decades of her work that produced an extraordinarily productive run of films and art installations. We discuss the film’s merging of digital aesthetics and philosophy with a broader tradition of repurposing discarded food and artifacts, along with the rediscovery of Varda’s significance and reappraisal of her filmography which began in the late 90s and early 2000s. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Instagram @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

Matt and Travis welcome friend of the pod William Remmers to the show to discuss Varda’s final narrative fictional feature, One Hundred and One Nights of Simon Cinema. Created in celebration of the French’s conveniently defined 100th birthday of film, Varda’s movie features an astonishing number of international stars and film references of every kind you can imagine. We discuss the film’s unmistakable imprint of the unique sensibilities of Varda along with the historical significance of the film paired with its modest idiosyncrasies. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd William Remmers: Instagram | Varda clip

Varda completed her trilogy of tributes to her husband with the most straightforward of the three: a documentary covering Demy’s career and his impact on cinema. As expected, however, Varda at her most straightforward is still a little off-kilter, so there are as many pleasurable detours as there are dry facts and clips in this loving documentary. We discuss the film’s balance of Varda and Demy and close out this miniseries with some thoughts on the couple and Varda’s relationship with her husband’s art. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

On this episode, we cover an unusual entry in the Complete catalog: not just a bonus feature, but a bonus feature created for someone else’s movie. Varda revisits her husband’s 1967 film The Young Girls of Rochefort on the 25th anniversary of the film’s release, returning to the seaside town where it was filmed for a celebration of the masterpiece that took over its streets in the 1960s. We discuss both this tribute film and Demy’s work that inspired it, covering the confectionary joy of the original and Varda’s unique perspective and style lent to her husband’s legacy. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

Created in the final months of husband Jacques Demy’s life, Varda’s fourteenth feature is one of her most emotionally resonant and visually sumptuous works. On this episode, Matt and Travis discuss the film’s multi-faceted structure as a fictional recreation of Demy’s childhood, a documentary portrait of Demy as an aging and sick adult, and a visual essay on the ways in which Demy’s childhood directly informed his work as one of the most aesthetically dynamic French filmmakers of his generation. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

On the thirteenth episode, Matt and Travis tackle the second half of Varda’s diptych with Jane Birkin. After taking a look at our own unease with the subject matter of this controversial fictional film based on a short story Birkin wrote, we discuss the film’s other themes such as the AIDS epidemic, growing older, and 1980s video games. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

On the twelfth episode, Matt and Travis welcome longtime Friend of the Show Ericca Long back to discuss Varda’s idiosyncratic portrait of actress, model and icon Jane Birkin. Along with many tangential topics including modern arcades, getting older, and the musical genius of Steely Dan, we discuss the film’s unique blurring of document and fiction and Varda’s insightful use of the many tools at her disposal to present a multifaceted presentation of someone her audience likely believed they already knew everything about. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd Ericca doesn’t have links but wanted to include her deepest thanks to the show and say RIP forever to JB and AV!

On the eleventh episode, Matt and Travis welcome Alex Kittle to discuss Vagabond, one of Varda’s most successful and praised films. Alex is a projectionist at the Brattle Theater, one of the greatest and most important repertory theaters in America, in Cambridge, MA. She’s also an accomplished artist as Pan and Scan on Etsy, Ko-Fi, and Behance among other places, with a focus on film and other pop-culture related content. On the episode, we discuss Varda’s empathic portrayal of a woman who has intentionally placed herself on the margins of society and the way this portrait challenges our own personal relationship to the basic social contract we’ve constructed. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd Alex Kittle: Instagram | Letterboxd

On the tenth episode, Matt and Travis discuss Documenteur, Varda’s fictional feature pairing with her documentary Mur Murs. A self-described “emotion picture,” Varda’s final film in Hollywood is semi-autobiographical. We discuss the movie’s unique tone merging melancholy and playful meta touches that nod both to Mur Murs and the nature of filmmaking in general, along with the personal and compelling portrayal of a woman’s interiority that makes this one of the more underrated films in her catalog. We also discuss a wide range of shorts Varda made in the period after Documenteur and before her next landmark film. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

On the ninth episode, Matt and Travis discuss Varda’s documentary on the murals of Los Angeles, Mur Murs. Created virtually simultaneously with the fictional film Documenteur,  Mur Murs is a portrait of Los Angeles as a concrete landscape dotted with organic beauty from unusual origins. We discuss the film’s depiction of this much misunderstood city and in particular its marginalized communities that get to shine here, along with Varda’s evolving relationship with the documentary form she has developed throughout her career. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

On the eighth episode, Matt and Travis welcome Laura Cannon from the Fatal Femmes podcast to discuss Varda’s self-described “feminist musical,” One Sings, the Other Doesn’t. We discuss the film’s still-relevant issues confronting women, the unique nature of the friendship depicted in the film, and the film’s powerful emotional impact. The Complete Social: Twitter | Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd Fatal Femmes podcast

On the seventh episode of The Complete Varda, Matt and Travis discuss the charming documentary Varda made for German television in 1975, Daguerréotypes. A simple profile of the shops and their keepers on the block in Paris where Varda lived until the end of her life, the film also served as a challenge for Varda, who restricted herself to a 200 foot range around her flat in order to stay close to her young son. We discuss this clever juxtaposition of filmic text and performance piece outside of the work, along with the political implications of the film; but we also bask in the glow of a neighborhood’s charm that typified a bygone era even at the time of its filming. The Complete Social: Twitter | Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

On the sixth episode of the Complete Varda, Matt and Travis discuss the most obscure film in Varda’s filmography, the 1970 made-for-television film Nausicaa. Censored at the time and surviving only in a work print sent to Belgium (with all other materials destroyed and the film never finished), Nausicaa is the story of Varda’s search for meaning in her own history and the contemporary political crisis in Greece. We discuss the film’s fragmented and experimental structure, its political history, and the ways in which Varda uses film as a search for meaning and connection. The Complete Social: Twitter | Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

On the fifth episode of the Complete Varda, Matt and Travis discuss another of Varda’s unique explorations, 1969’s Lions Love (…and Lies was added at some point after the initial release). Filmed during Varda’s first stint in Los Angeles, the movie is largely formless and flirts with the line between documentary and fiction in a way that would define much of Varda’s later work. We discuss these fascinating new areas of exploration, and also cover the two shorts Varda made during this time in northern California, Uncle Yanco and The Black Panthers. The Complete Social: Twitter | Facebook Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

On the fourth episode of the fifth season, Matt and Travis welcome their first guest of the season, the eternally wise and effortlessly cool David Blakeslee of Criterion Reflections, to discuss one of Agnès Varda’s most unusual and idiosyncratic films, 1966’s Les Creatures. We discuss the unusual status of the film as Varda’s most commercial and most experimental movie, along with the film’s context within the larger FNW sci-fi adventures of the mid to late 60s. The Complete Social: Twitter | Facebook Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd David Blakeslee: Criterion Reflections | Facebook

On the third episode of the fifth season, Matt and Travis discuss one of Varda’s most insidious works of cinematic irony, Le Bonheur. Created in the wake of her international success with Cleo, Varda’s third feature is a joyful evocation of man’s ability to find happiness under any condition.. or a viciously funny and damning critique of the patriarchy, wrapped up in a bright and shiny little package. We discuss the gap between what the film seems to be and what it really is, along with its impressive technique and visual sumptuousness in the director’s first fictional work fully in color. The Complete Social: Twitter | Facebook Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

On the second episode of the fifth season, Matt and Travis quickly encounter Varda’s most famous and praised film, the New Wave masterpiece Cléo from 5 to 7. Made seven years after her debut, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a portrait of a young woman waiting for medical test results and wandering through contemporary Paris in real time. We discuss Varda’s role in the FNW movement, her use of narrative and technical devices to present her feminist themes, and the film’s enduring legacy and new appearance on the 2022 Sight and Sound list of the best films ever made. The Complete Social: Twitter | Facebook Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

On the first episode of the fifth season, Matt and Travis begin their discussion of the films of Agnès Varda with her debut feature, La Pointe Courte. Barely screened upon completion but seen by a handful of hugely influential filmmakers and cinephiles, the film is now regarded as the first film of the French New Wave and a pioneering work in all of French cinema. We also discuss Varda’s three shorts she made in the interim between her debut and her second film: L’opéra-mouffe, Ô saisons, ô châteaux, and Du côté de la côte. The Complete Social: Twitter | Facebook Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd

For the final episode of the season, Matt and Travis are joined by Andrew Osmond, a writer and journalist who specializes in film and animation and the author of Satoshi Kon: The Illusionist, the only book in English that focuses entirely on Kon. We discuss his interest in animation and anime in particular, along with … Continue reading The Complete Kon 6 – Wrap Up with Andrew Osmond →

Satoshi Kon’s final film is the culmination of his career up to this point: an amalgamation of his most ambitious technical experimentation and the meta and philosophical themes deeply infused into all of his films, here made literal in a story that provides an opportunity for Kon’s vision to play out in a free-flowing manner. … Continue reading The Complete Kon 5 – Paprika →

For the fourth episode, Matt and Travis cover the epic and extraordinary Paranoia Agent, Kon’s 13-episode television series. The first and only thing Kon did for TV began as a combination of many of his smaller ideas and story concepts that didn’t have a home but eventually morphed into something more ambitious and far-reaching. We … Continue reading The Complete Kon 4 – Paranoia Agent →

For the third episode, Travis and Matt discuss the magical comedy adventure Tokyo Godfathers, Kon’s third feature. We discuss the vividly rendered central characters, the small details and recurring motifs that Kon layers into his work, and the departure from the reality/fantasy merging of his two previous films. We wanted to get this out for … Continue reading The Complete Kon 3 – Tokyo Godfathers →

In this episode, Matt and Travis cover Satoshi Kon’s second feature, Millennium Actress. In many ways a reworking of the themes and techniques Kon explored in his debut, the film is nevertheless an entirely different viewing experience: an uplifting and deeply moving exploration of a woman’s life in movies and her quest to find the … Continue reading The Complete Kon 2 – Millennium Actress →

On the first episode of our fourth season, Matt and Travis begin to work through the catalog of Satoshi Kon, our first Japanese filmmaker and the first to work in the medium of animation. We talk about Kon’s life and anime before diving into his debut feature, Perfect Blue. One of the great animated thrillers, … Continue reading The Complete Kon 1 – Perfect Blue →

On the final episode of the season, we reflect on the films we’ve watched over the past two years and the legacy of Kieślowski. We also cover films produced after his death that were associated with him through scripts and other connections, plus the books we’ve enjoyed along the way. We end with our final … Continue reading The Complete Kieślowski 19 – Wrap Up →

For the last of our episodes on Kieślowski’s final work, the Three Colors trilogy, we are joined again by Ericca Long, co-host of The Magic Lantern Podcast to discuss Red, the director’s final work before retiring and soon after passing away from complications during heart surgery. We discuss the film’s depiction of its female protagonist … Continue reading The Complete Kieślowski 18 – Three Colors: Red →

For the second of our episodes on Kieślowski’s final work, the Three Colors trilogy, we are joined again by Ericca Long, co-host of The Magic Lantern Podcast to discuss White, the second film in the series. A surprising departure in a number of ways from the director’s previous two films, White represents a return to … Continue reading The Complete Kieślowski 17 – Three Colors: White →

For the first of our episodes on Kieślowski’s final work, the Three Colors trilogy, we are joined by Ericca Long, co-host of The Magic Lantern Podcast to discuss Blue, the first film in the series. The second film Kieślowski made with international financing, Blue is another towering work of European arthouse cinema, yet remains surprisingly … Continue reading The Complete Kieślowski 16 – Three Colors: Blue →

For the first post-Dekalog episode, Travis and Matt welcome Dave Eves and Becky D’Anna, a couple of cinephiles and Bergman experts, to discuss The Double Life of Veronique. This film was Kieślowski’s first partially French-financed movie, and the first after his newfound international fame. It was also his first movie since the fall of the … Continue reading The Complete Kieślowski 15 – The Double Life of Veronique →

For our final episode on the Dekalog, Travis and Matt welcome Michał Oleszczyk, a film critic and scholar based in Poland who has contributed to outlets such as Fandor and rogerebert.com. He recently curated a Kieślowski film festival at the director’s archives in Sokołowsko, Poland, and we were thrilled to have him on to discuss … Continue reading The Complete Kieślowski 14 – Dekalog Wrap-Up with Michał Oleszczyk →

To close out our 6-part miniseries covering the individual episodes of the Dekalog, Matt and Travis welcome Daisuke Beppu, who hosts a wonderful YouTube channel covering the Criterion Collection and other film and home media topics. We discuss episodes 9 and 10 of the series, which stand out in distinctive ways. For episode 9, we…

For part 5 of our 6-part miniseries on Kieślowski’s monumental Dekalog television series, Matt and Travis welcome friend of the show and chief admin of the Criterion Considered group on Facebook Tim Leggoe. We discuss the next two episodes in the Dekalog, 7 and 8, which both focus on a pair of female characters and…

Matt and Travis are joined by David Blakeslee of the invaluable Criterion Reflections podcast to discuss the second Dekalog episode that was expanded into a feature, episode six, which would be titled A Short Film About Love in its feature version. We discuss the morally sticky nature of both the story and the film itself,…

Matt and Travis welcome Cole Roulain, cohost of The Magic Lantern podcast and cohoncho of The 25th Frame, to discuss the fifth episode of Dekalog and the first to be adapted into a feature-length film. The episode is a significant departure from the family dramas and moral dilemmas of the first four episodes in the…

Matt and Travis move on to parts 3 and 4 of Kieślowski’s epic television series Dekalog and bring on Keith Enright of the now defunct Criterion Completion website and pod-on-permanent-hiatus. This is part 2 of our 6-part series on the anthology film that catapulted Kieślowski into international fame. Unlike the gut-punch of the first film…

Matt and Travis are excited to kick off our first multi-part series on one work: Kieślowski’s legendary Dekalog television miniseries. For the first episode, we welcome Josh Hornbeck, host of the forthcoming Criterion Channel Surfing podcast, to discuss the first two episodes in the series. Initially intended to be directed by separate up-and-coming directors through…

Matt and Travis welcome Caitlin, the host of Her Head in Films, to discuss Kieślowski’s final film before creating the internationally acclaimed Dekalog series for Television, 1985’s No End. Released in the wake of a two-year period of martial law in Poland that marked the end of the Solidarity breakthroughs of 1980-81, the film was…

Matt and Travis are joined by Martin Kessler of Flixwise and Flixwise Canada to discuss Kieślowski’s shelved 1981 theatrical feature Blind Chance. Like Short Working Day, Blind Chance was never shown publicly before being withheld from circulation, a victim of the crackdown that culminated in martial law at the end of 1981. Only after Kieślowski…

Matt and Travis welcome Matt Schlee from Cineccentric to discuss the fifth feature in Kieślowski’s filmography, Short Working Day. In 1981, Kieślowski made two films that would be immediately shelved and go unreleased for years: the theatrical feature Blind Chance (which was also censored even its eventually released version) and the made-for-Television feature Short Working…

Matt and Travis welcome Will Remmers to the show to discuss Kieślowski’s second theatrical feature and four feature overall, 1979’s Camera Buff. After The Calm was shelved, Kieślowski carried on with his documentary work, producing I Don’t Know (which he voluntarily shelved to protect the subject), From a Night Porter’s Point of View, and Seven…

Matt and Travis welcome the all-powerful voice and cinematic insight of Mr. Mark Hurne, co-host of Close-Up and regular on Criterion Now, to discuss Kieslowski’s second full-length made-for-TV feature and third overall feature, The Calm. The Calm was made almost immediately on the heels of Kieślowski’s debut theatrical feature in 1976 for Polish Television. However,…

Travis and Matt welcome Jon Laubinger, host of fellow 25th Frame show Film, Baby, Film, to discuss The Scar, Kieślowski’s second feature-length film. The Scar was Kieślowski’s first feature film for theaters, as Personnel had been made for television. Although it was fairly well-received, including two awards at the Polish Film Festival, Kieślowski was extremely…

Season three of The Complete begins with the first full-length film made by Krzysztof Kieślowski, the made-for-TV 72-minute feature Personnel. We begin by discussing the director’s reputation and give a brief overview of his early life, time at the Łodz film school, and early documentary work. We also discuss the short narratives he made prior…