A ghost from an attic resurrected by love and frame-by-frame devotion.
When Agnès Varda was preparing the film Jacquot de Nantes in 1990, she was able to shoot in the small apartment where Jacques was raised. While emptying the attic, Agnès found pieces of 9.5 mm film, dry and folded, almost broken and two small cardboard figures. The film was impossible to project and the film had to be remade. Showing the pieces of film to Jacques he immediately identified La Ballerine. A student from the Fine Arts School of Nantes therefore redrew each shot, frame by frame, on blank 16 mm film.
Direction
Demy's childhood imagination, literally unearthed and reborn.
Production
Frame-by-frame resurrection by a student artist, 46 years later.
Practical Effects
Cardboard figures and 9.5mm decay become living archaeology.
Director
Jacques Demy
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
9.5mm film was the home movie format of interwar France—Demy's family capturing magic in the margins of history.
Varda would later call herself a 'glaneuse' (gleaner); finding and restoring La Ballerine became the prototype for her life's work of salvaging forgotten images.
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