On Thursday, March 13, at 20:00, EMST presents the film Faces Places (Visages Villages), directed by filmmaker Agnès Varda and photographer and street artist JR.
The celebrated 89-year-old film director, an emblematic figures of the French New Wave, and the internationally renowned 33-year-old photographer and visual artist JR collaborated on this captivating road documentary, which conjoins documentary filmmaking with the road movie genre. Kindred spirits, Varda and JR share a passion for images—how they are created, displayed, and shared.
Together, they travel across French villages in JR’s photo-truck, meet locals and everyday people, learn about their stories, and create giant portraits of them. These photographs are then placed on the walls of houses, barns, factories, and even trains, revealing both the character and history of those portrayed, and insight into the creators themselves. Faces Places captures these heartwarming and unexpected encounters and the impact they create, while simultaneously revealing the growing friendship and trust between the two directors. The film premiered worldwide at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Best Documentary Award.
Biographies:
Agnès Varda (Belgium 1928 – France 2019) was a French filmmaker of Greek οrigin. She studied history and photography at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris. She was married to the renowned director Jacques Demy from 1962 until his passing in 1990. Varda is considered a pioneer of cinema and one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. Her work is also significant in the field of feminist cinema. Along with her husband, she was a member of Rive Gauche, the Left Bank film movement, one of the two groups that shaped the Nouvelle Vague, the French ‘New Wave’.
JR was born in 1983 near Paris. In 2001, he found a camera in the Paris Metro and began documenting his adventures in the metro and on rooftops, later pasting these photographs onto building facades. JR exhibits freely on walls around the world, pasting photographs in public spaces to reveal the faces and stories of unseen people—from the slums of France to Turkey, from Times Square to the Pantheon in Paris, from the favelas of Brazil to the shantytowns of Kenya. When he pastes his photographs on walls, community members actively participate in the creative process, with no stage separating the creators from the audience. He lives and works in Paris and New York.
TICKETS
Agnès Varda & JR
Faces Places (Visages Villages), 2017
In French with English and Greek subtitles
Duration: 90’
ΕΜΣΤ Mezannine Screening Room @ 20:00
General Admission tickets 4 euros, available at the Museum’s Ticket Desk and online in the system below.
Online pre-sale of tickets ends on the day of the screening at 17:00. After the end of the pre-sale, the remaining available tickets will be available at the Museum’s Ticket Desk:
Ticket Change and Cancellation Policy
- No changes (to a different date) allowed.
- No cancellations allowed.
