Arriving in Bologna and Agnes Varda Exhibit

Sunday October 11 was a travel day.  We packed and went for a mid-morning coffee at the Pasticceria Dal Fior around the corner.  We luckily were able to check out a bit later than usual from our Airbnb. We took a bus to the train station to catch the 12:26 train to Bologna.

Pasticceria Dal Fior-- very popular spot for breakfast.

Alonso with our croissant and coffee--lovely in the sun.  Farewell to beautiful Verona! 

We arrived in Bologna at 2:00 p.m.  It was a beautiful sunny day with a high of 23C.  

Outside of part of Bologna Centrale Train Station

We decided to walk to our Airbnb.  It is pretty flat and only about a 25 minute walk.  We also knew the route as the Airbnb we had stayed at in 2022 was not far from the place we are staying at on this trip.

We passed an from tobacco factory which now houses a cinema.

Our host had asked us to text him when we got to the apartment building.  He was then able to buzz us into the building. We are on the fifth floor which has an elevator.  We located the lock box and let ourselves into the apartment.  It is a good-sized, bright, well-equipped apartment.

Living room and kitchen area.  Nice sized table in kitchen area.

There is a dishwasher, microwave and a large refrigerator and freezer hidden on another wall.

Large bedroom with good closet space.

Modern bathroom

The balcony is a nice treat. The washing machine is in a locker on the balcony.  

We had a sandwich we had brought from Verona on the deck and then did a quick trip to a nearby supermarket.  We decided to head out to the main square and then have some dinner.

There is a great bookstore (Liberia Club Dumas) right next to the entrance to our apartment building, part of the same complex.  There was a book launch party taking place with a table of snacks and drinks outside the store.

Bookstore (too much reflection) 

Bookstore party- we are on the top floor of this building.  Our entrance is to the right of the bookstore.

Porticoes everywhere in Bologna

Very busy Sunday at Piazza Maggiore

Neptune statue

Church of San Petronio

Wine store on the Piazza - we were able to taste a few wines.  The person helping us lived in Toronto for a few years and worked at Terroni.  Small world.  We bought a nice bottle of red wine from Tuscany.

Busy Sunday night on the square

We decided to wander a bit in the Quadrilatero District, the area with the narrow streets of the old city market.  It is full of stalls with all kinds of food products, including fresh fruit and vegetables, bakeries and some of the best delis.  At night, people eat out having large plates of mortadella and cheeses.

Busy street in the Quadrilatero. (just behind Paizza Maggiore)

We passed by a three story building which contains a Librerie Coop bookshop and an Eataly food store.  The bookshop was having a well-attended event.

Peering through the window at the book-reading and interview.

We were ready for dinner.  We decided to go to Sfoglia Rina, which has been making fresh pasta since 1963.  Our food tour guide in 2022 had recommended it and we had eaten there that trip.

Alonso had tagliatelle with ragú.  Portions are very generous.

I had my favourite Bolognese dish- tortellini in brodo.  So good.

There is also a room with communal tables- very busy on a Sunday night

Home made pasta--on the way out of the restaurant

Neptune at night

We walked back to our apartment where the bookstore party was still going on.

Bookstore right next to our apartment building door.  Still buzzing a few hours after we first passed by.

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Monday October 12 started out with some rain which lingered until the early afternoon.  It then cleared and we had a beautiful day.  High of 22C.  The forecast for the remainder of the time we are in Bologna looks very good.

Our first destination was the Mercato delle Erbe (food market) to pick up some provisions.  On the way, we passed an alley with a display by Caro Mirzoyan, an Armenian visual artist and photographer based in Yerevan.  The photos were taken in Tehran in January and February 2025.  Absolute: Tehran Cats "investigates the conditions of image-making under systems of surveillance.  Photographing people in the streets of Tehran attracts immediate attention and confrontation.  Turning the camera towards the ground is the only possibility and cats are the only living subject that could be photographed without interrogation.  The photos were made on discarded receipt paper collected from shops and streets, and retain fragments of Farsi text and everyday transactions.  Absolute refers to the condition of total limitation.  Absolute: Tehran Cats is an act of survival underlying the importance of a free press and revealing how images persist even when the conditions of their making are deliberately constrained."

The write- up of the exhibit summarized above.

The cats-- on the receipt papers

Farsi writing in the background

The Mercato delle Erbe is the largest covered historic food market in the centre of Bologna. It was originally built in 1910, rebuilt after WWII damage and then underwent a major renovation in 2014 to integrate modern food stalls and dining places.  There are many fresh fruit and vegetable stalls, butcher stalls, bakeries and cheese stalls with a number of small restaurants off to the side.  There is a fish section that is,  unfortunately, closed on Mondays. 

Entrance to the Mercato

Very good fruit and veg stalls

More stalls

We got some fruit and vegetables and some interesting hamburgers with prosciutto and artichokes from a meat store.  Alonso took our purchases back to the apartment (about a 15 minute walk) while I had a coffee in the area in front of the Mercato.

La bottega del Caffè

Some ancient furnishings-- they had seating outside the caffè.

It was still raining when Alonso returned and we walked through Piazza Maggiore.  What a difference a day makes.  While the square is a huge gathering place on Sundays, on Monday (especially with the rain) there were very few people around.

All quiet in Piazza Maggiore

Totally different vibe than Sunday

Neptune in the rain

We decided to get some treats at Paolo Atti & Figli a historic family-run bakery, fresh pasta shop (pastificio) and pastry shop (pasticceria), founded in 1880.  

Lots of local delicacies

Small fruit crostini on the left- cookies on the right

 Our destination for the afternoon was the Galleria Modernissimo.  The gallery and a historic underground cinema are located beneath Piazza Re Enzo and Via Rizzoli housed inside the foundations of Palazzo Ronzani.  The underground cinema space opened in February 1915 as an Art Nouveau venue.  It screened films until it closed down in 2007.  A decision was made to restore the Cinema which reopened on November 21, 2023.  It operates as the Cinema Modernissimo.  The underground passageways and antechambers function as the Galleria Modernissimo- an exhibition space curated by the Cineteca di Bologna.  

Entrance to the underground Galleria Modernissimo.

We went to see Viva Varda! Il Cinema è Donna (Cinema is Woman).  Director, photographer, artist and pioneer of the Nouvelle Vague, Agnès Varda is the focus of a huge exhibition exploring her work across cinema, photography, fine art and political activism. There was also a small section on her connection to Italy.  The exhibition was produced by the Cineteca di Bologna and La Cinémathèque Française.

Poster for the Agnes Varda exhibition

Juergen Teller, Agnès Varda, Paris 2018

The opening room had a multimedia installation with highlights from her films, speeches, and her activism throughout her 70 year career entitled:  The Awakening of the Gaze: Varda and Feminism.

In her speech on the occasion of receiving an Honorary Palme d' Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival she  noted that over the past decade

73% of French produced films had male directors.

There was a timeline detailing highlights of her life.  She was born in Belgium on May 30, 1928, to Eugène Varda (of Greek origin) and Christians Pasquet (French).  In 1940, to escape the Nazis, the family settled in Sète, in the south of France, living on a boat along the canal.  Agnès studied at the Sorbonne and attended evening classes at the École du Louvre to obtain her CAP diploma as a photographer.  In 1951, she bought a building with a large courtyard on rue Daguerre in Paris.  She moved in with artist Valentina Schlegel (1925-2021) (Varda's first lover). Varda lived in the building for the rest of her life.  In 1958, she gave birth to a daughter, Rosalie, from her relationship with actor Antoine Bourseiller.   In 1958, she met Jacques Demy (1931-1990) at the film festival in Tours.   They moved in together in 1959 and they married in 1962.  She had a son, Mathieu (b. 1972) with Demy.  After he passed away in 1990, she made three films exploring grief as a living subject.

Agnès Varda, Self-Portrait, Paris, 1949.

There was a wall with a number of self-portraits. Throughout her career, Varda has continued to portray herself with irony or in a more existential quest.

Self-portraits

There was a section on her first film, La Pointe Courte (1954).  The film simultaneously showed disagreements in a couple and the history of a neighbourhood in Sète.  La Pointe Courte is a suburb of Sète in the South of France where Agnès Varda had grown up.  Using novice or amateur actors in a self-produced movie with natural sets, she also anticipated some of the future concepts of the French New Wave movement.  I really enjoyed some of the photos of Sète in the mid 1950s.  We have visited a number of times as one of my cousins lives there.

Bernard Grasberg, Louis Stein and Agnès Varda on the set of La Pointe Courte, Sète, 1954.

Scouting photo for La Pointe Courte

Agnès Varda, Phillippe Noiret and Silvia Monfort in La Pointe Courte, Sète, 1954

There was a section on Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cléo from 5 to 7), one of her best-known films.  Varda anticipated by a decade the motif of wandering which would become one of the defining traits of 1970s cinema.  "The crossing of territories is a recurring theme in Varda's work.  And it is all the more daring as it was embodied by female characters".

Poster for film in Italian

Photo of Michel Legrand (1932-2019).  Michel Legrand played a leading role in the history of 20th century cinema and music composing more than 200 soundtracks for film and television.  He collaborated both with Jacques Demy and Agnès Varda.  He composed the theme for Cléo de 5 à 7.  We ran into him once at Duc des Lombards (a jazz club in Paris).

Still of main actress Corinne Marchand

Original American poster of Vagabond 1985--
it won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival in 1985

Zoltan Jancso, Sandrine Bonnaire and Agnès Varda on the set of Sans Toit ni loi

One section contained a number of portraits that Varda had taken.

Brassaï (16-18, Rue Cels, Paris 14e), December 1954.

Calder performing Cirque Calder (1926-1931) at the Galerie Maeght, Paris, 1953.

Self-portrait, 1955.  This portrait echoes the strong presence of Jean Cocteau
(and surrealism in general), in the post-war artistic landscape.

Agnès Varda and Jacques Demy, 1964.

Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina, Agnès Varda, Jacques Demy, and others, Exhibition print, 2023 from a photograph taken c. 1961.

There were other photos of actors Varda had worked with.

Catherine Deneuve, in front of a Paul Klee painting, Los Angeles, 1969

There was a section of her photos from a visit to Cuba.  Her filmography from the 1960s and 1970s reflects the political movements of the period, including the Cuban Revolution, the American Civil Rights movements and the hippie generation.  From the early 1980s, she studied themes of marginality and poverty in Los Angeles and in French cities and villages.

Fidel Castro with stone wings, Cuba 1963.   Varda published a book Salut les Cubans in 1963.

In 1957, Varda travelled across China for two months as a photographer with a French delegation.

Dider Doussin, On the set of The Gleaners and I, 1999.

Faces Places (2017), where Agnès hits the road again, aged 88, with the artist JR.  
I saw this film at TIFF which Varda attended.

Varda and JR.

Her final film was Varda by Agnès (2019).

In 1971, Varda was one of the 343 women who signed the Manifesto of the 343 admitting they had an abortion despite it being illegal in France at the time and asking that abortion be made legal.  She explored these themes in her 1977 film One Sings, the Other Doesn't.

Carlos Santos, Delphine Seyrig and Agnès Varda during a feminist demonstration, 1972

Great photograph of Varda and her Academy Honorary Oscar.

After the exhibit we went across the street to the Cineteca Bookshop.  

Lots of film books and posters

It was now time for coffee!  We went to Caffè Terzi, founded in 2001 by Manuel Terzi as the city's first specialty coffee and tea shop.  He wanted to present coffee through a new, wine-like lens focusing on single-origin beans and customized roasting.  Though folks were skeptical at first as he originally did not serve sandwiches, soft drinks or liquors, the caffè gained a loyal following and respect.

Outside Caffè Terzi

Elegant room- very good coffee

We walked back to the apartment, passing the Palazzo d'Accursio (Palazzo Cumunale), which has served as the City Town Hall since 1336.  It incorporates the Torre dell Orologio (Clock Tower).

 

White sign under the window to the left of the entrance-says: Fermate il Governo di Israele- Save Gaza" (Stop the Government of Israel- Save Gaza).

Our friend, Sari had arrived after a tour of Sicily and was staying at a B & B near us.  She came over for dinner.  We had beans, potatoes, the delicious hamburgers, and a salad prepared by Chef Alonso.  Sari had brought some marzipan treats from Erice, Sicily which we had for dessert.

A great first day in Bologna.  We will be taking a day trip to Parma on Tuesday October 13.