I visited the Blum & Poe art gallery to which is holding an exhibit on Agnes Varda. The name sounded familiar and I realized that I have seen some of her work in previous classes so I was very interested to see an actual exhibit on her. The gallery had a screening room of a short piece she did called Le Triptyque de Noirmoutier. The film was projected using three projectors and displayed on the wooden paneled door. The individual images were all still camera and comprised of a beach shot, a kitchen shot, and a cupboard shot. often times when one person (the main cast considered of an elderly woman, a middle aged man and women, and a young boy) would walk off screen from either a left or right direction they would end up in the other room or the beach itself (the beach instantly however)

The film is a 9 minute loop. I walked in what I assumed was the beginning but as it looped again for me I’m now thinking it could have been the end, the transition happens so fluidly it’s hard to tell. The spacing of the the room and placement of the viewing area puts the viewer in a position that their whole eyesight is filled with the film, almost giving it a sense of difficulty of which frame to focus on, not wanting to miss any detail or action in the other frames. This kept my eyes moving at all times, waiting in suspense for an action that sometimes would never come. The film depicts daily life at a beach side home, with the women doing house work while the man reads the paper and the child plays outside.  The noises would mix together from the three visual spaces, the sound of waves are accompanied by the peeling of potatoes and the clanking of cups in the other two spaces.

I was told that I was able to touch the board and pull the hinges closed if I wanted too, I didn’t since I was a it unsure but I like the idea that it was an interactive aspect of viewing the film, that the viewer can open and close the doors like the woman were opening and closing the cupboards, putting the viewer inside the space if they so desire. I think that may have been the goal for Varda, as she grew up in the same area with her family that this film was shot and that she wanted to bring the viewer in to be a part of her world, a part of a family..