TRIBUTES AND RETROSPECTIVES

Jane Birkin was a model, singer, actress, screenwriter and director. Her film career spans more than fifty years, from a small role in Antonioni’s Blow Up to Jacques Rivette’s last film, 36 vues du Pic Saint-Loup (Around a Small Mountain). Her relationship with Serge Gainsbourg and her continuing presence in French artistic culture have made her a figure as familiar as she is enigmatic. So it is not surprising that her filmography includes not one but three film portraits in the form of a puzzle. For the spectator, this confirms the blurry feeling that in the space between fiction and documentary, Jane Birkin’s aura shines with the same intensity. That on any point along the reality-fiction spectrum, she reveals the same humanity.

As a tribute to the woman everyone simply called Jane, in memory of her presence alongside us in Angers as president of the jury in 1993, in Sarajevo where she was president of the only edition of Premiers Plans in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1996, and finally in 2018 with Agnès Varda for the latter’s own retrospective, the Festival Premiers Plans will take you into the intimacy of a complete artist with three portraits: Jane B. par Agnès V. (Jane B. for Agnès V.) (1988), Boxes (2007) and Jane par Charlotte (Jane by Charlotte) (2021).