Agnès Varda’s Art of Being There

Movie theatres used to be more like art galleries. Many viewers went without regard to showtimes and dropped in on a movie in progress, staying again to watch from the start to their own entry point (thus, the origin of the phrase “This is where I came in”). Now moviegoing—expensive and rare—is undertaken with a devotional rigor, and the casual side of watching movies is found mainly in private (cell phones on trains). But, for a short while this spring, such viewing is back in public at the Blum & Poe art gallery, in New York, with a whimsical yet impassioned exhibit of work by the filmmaker Agnès Varda.