Restored in 2015 by Ciné-Tamaris at the Éclair laboratories, with the support of the CNC

For the magazine F. comme Femmes, Sylvie Genevoix and Michel Honorin asked me and several other women directors to make seven-minute film addressing the question Qu’est-ce qu’être femme? – what does it mean to be a woman? I narrowed the subject down to Notre corps, notre sexe – our body, our sex. With only seven minutes, there was no time to waste or beat around the bush. I made a ciné-tract. I wrote a text for ten or eleven women, all very different from one another. We filmed in a brightly lit studio apartment and outside, on a construction site in the neighbourhood, with a group of men – passers-by, construction workers, office workers, a tailor and Guy Cavagnac. When the film was broadcast, Antenne 2 received letters of protest. How could they dare show, at dinnertime or shortly afterwards, a naked woman, standing upright and seen from the front, pregnant and laughing her head off? She was the wife of the chief camera operator, Jacques Reiss, heavily pregnant and radiant, naked and dancing. “This is not suitable viewing for children,” the letters read. I then suggested replying with a standard letter:

“Dear Madam or Sir,
With regard to your letter of …, our response is: on the contrary!
Yours sincerely.”

The television channel Antenne 2 asked seven women directors to answer the question “What is a woman?” in seven minutes. Agnès Varda responds with a ciné-tract: women discuss sex, desire, advertising and children – whether to have them or not. At the time, the sight of a naked, pregnant woman dancing and laughing uproariously prompted written complaints from some viewers.

Agnès Varda, Varda par Agnès, 1994