CONTOURS: Mur Murs (1981) / preceded by Rainbow Dance (1936)

Paradise Theatre, Nov. 17 2024

“Living, breathing, seething, talking, wailing, murmuring walls,” says Agnès Varda in the voiceover of Mur Murs, an affectionate documentary about the sprawling murals and graffiti of late 1970s Los Angeles. Varda positions these artworks in sharp contradistinction to the commercial billboards advertising everything-and-nothing that are littered all over the city. Here, murals are archives—material sites for exchanging cultural norms, expressions against state violence, repositories for feelings, art for the everyman.

Mur Murs is as much about collectivity as individual expression: the Black community of St. Elmo’s boasts a kaleidoscopic mural scene totally distinct from their surrounding locales; the East Los Streetscapers, a muralist art collective, softly soap the walls to keep their colors appearing vibrant; tattooed artists and passersby describe the murals present on their bodies. The feedback loop of art, connectivity, and spatiality in Mur Murs presents a sort of generative curiosity which populates Varda’s catalog: one’s attention to visual art emboldens their attention to cinema, and painting and filmmaking meet themselves in newfangled forms.

Excerpted from Saffron Maeve’s CONTOURS column.