<p>In her ever-evolving career, the legendary filmmaker Agns Varda has gone from being a photographer at the Avignon festival in the late 1940s, through being a director celebrated at the Cannes festival (<em>Clo de 5 7</em>, 1962), to her more ironic self-proclaimed status as a 'jeune artiste plasticienne'. She has recently staged mixed-media projects and exhibitions all over the world from Paris (2006) to Los Angeles (2013-14) and the latest 'tour de France' with JR (2015-16). <em>Agns Varda Unlimited: Image, Music, Media</em> reconsiders the legacy and potential of Varda's radical <em>tour de force cinmatique</em>, as seen in the 22-DVD 'definitive' <em>Tout(e) Varda</em>, and her enduring artistic presence. These essays discuss not just when, but also how and why, Varda's renewed artistic forms have ignited with such creative force, and have been so inspiring an influence. The volume concludes with two remarkable interviews: one with Varda herself, and another rare contribution from the leading actress of <em>Clo de 5 7</em>, Corinne Marchand.</p> <p>Marie-Claire Barnet is Senior Lecturer in French at Durham University.</p>
Madame de Souza was an eighteenth-century political journalist of undisputed talent. She did not fear to accuse religion of falsely justifying intolerant political attitudes, or using indoctrination for little human gain. She dared to show that this achieved immediate social dislocation, and, in the long-term, grief and financial dysfunction. Eugenie et Mathilde, which documents revolutionary decisions made in Emigration, and the irrevocable futility of losing family, home, rank and property in war, fully reflects her approach. It is a complex and compelling story of one family and its experience of 1789-1797 - the years of exile during the French Revolution. Heart-rending decisions, forced departures, capital punishment and death of loved-ones make the novel as topical now as it was on the eve of Napoleon's Russian Campaign. Souza's plea for tolerance, fraternity and compromise on the part of the State and its enemies has a relevance that stretches out to the 21st Century; her message to include women in politics and not to make them suffer the unnecessary death of fathers, husbands, children and friends is even more current. This edition lifts the veil on a literary form of anti-sentimental romance, or the art of making historically accurate accounts masquerade as fiction. That, more than anything else, was Madame de Souza's forte.