The Complete Podcast

Matthew Gasteier

The Complete is dedicated to taking chronological journeys through the most rewarding filmographies in cinema. Each season covers one director, with each episode focusing on one feature film from their catalog. The first season was dedicated to Stanley Kubrick, while the second season covered Elaine May, the third focused on Krzysztof Kieślowski, and our fourth season covered Satoshi Kon. Our current season explores the films of Agnès Varda.

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20 episodes
Updated Aug 13, 2025

Episodes20

Newest first

Aug 13, 2025 · 2 hr 12 min
The Complete Varda 25 – Wrap Up with Valeria Rotella
Matt and Travis wrap up their Varda journey with a very special guest. Valeria Rotella produced the bible that was used throughout this season: The Complete Films of Agnès Varda from the Criterion Collection. We discuss her own relationship with Varda’s work, her job as a producer for home media, and the box itself – perhaps the best thing Criterion has released to date. We hope you enjoy the conversation and this season! We’ll be back with a new director soon! The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Instagram @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd
Jul 2, 2025 · 1 hr 33 min
The Complete Varda 24 – Varda by Agnès
Varda’s final film is the summation of her career – literally. As with her penultimate work, this documentary was prompted by Varda’s daughter Rosalie, who suggested that Agnès tell her own story rather than have someone tell it for her. We discuss the relative structure of this autobiographical work with the earlier Beaches of Agnès, Varda’s evolving reputation as she moved into the final years of her life, and why you should display proper posture when sitting in the front row. We hope you have enjoyed this journey, and we will have a very special guest for the wrap up episode next month! The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Instagram @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd
Jun 7, 2025 · 1 hr 11 min
The Complete Varda 23 – Faces Places
Varda’s most well-known film from the last two decades of her life, Faces Places is a film collaboration with artist J.R. A warm both of a film, Faces Places is an exploration of the French countryside and the unexpected combination of two very different artists who are nevertheless united in their love of people. Matt and Travis discuss the film’s conventional style – and how unconventional of a description that is for an average Varda film. We also go off on quite a tangent! We hope you enjoy. Referenced on the show: Why Culture Has Come to a Standstill The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Instagram @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd
May 4, 2025 · 1 hr 5 min
The Complete Varda 22 – Agnès Varda: From Here to There
A running theme with Varda’s 21st century work is the unusual nature of its conception and/or execution, and From Here to There plays right into this pattern. Created out of Varda’s own recordings of her travels and encounters with artists of all types throughout the world, this miniseries presents Varda as curious consumer and globe-trotting ambassador for the novel and bold. Matt and Travis discuss the unusual nature of the film and dive into the notion of modern art and Varda’s relationship with it. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Instagram @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd
Apr 7, 2025 · 1 hr 57 min
The Complete Varda 21 – The Beaches of Agnès
For the 21st episode of season five, Matt and Travis cover one of the most extraordinary autobiographical documentaries in film history, The Beaches of Agnès. We discuss Varda’s love of beaches, her unusual and free-flowing structure, and her uncanny ability to piece it all together in a graceful and intellectually stimulating final package. This is one of Varda’s most complex and popular works, and it was great fun to unpack. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Instagram @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd
Mar 9, 2025 · 1 hr 9 min
The Complete Varda 20 – Some Widows of Noirmoutier
Varda’s 20th feature is as unusual as her stitched-together 19th. Created as an installation piece and converted into a television special, Some Widows of Noirmoutier is a straightforward yet profoundly moving documentary. In this episode, Matt and Travis discuss this oft-overlooked Varda feature, along with her blossoming visual artist identity and the broader work Varda undertook in the third and final phase of her shifting career. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Instagram @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd
Feb 8, 2025 · 1 hr 16 min
The Complete Varda 19 – Cinévardaphoto
Matt and Travis encounter an unusually constructed film: Cinévardaphoto, a set of three shorts stitched together to create a feature that could be shown in theaters and distributed on DVD. The first two of these films, Ulysse and Salut les Cubains, were previously created in the 1980s and 1960s, respectively. We covered these films in episodes 3 and 10, so here we focus on Ydessa. A profile of Ydessa Hendeles and her Teddy Bear exhibit that Varda encountered on a visit to Germany, the film is an interesting mix of profile and Varda’s own complex perspective on the work and the person. I’m not going to lie, we get a little silly here, but I hope you enjoy anyway.
Jan 19, 2025 · 2 hr 12 min
The Complete Varda 18 – The Gleaners and I
The Complete Varda 18 – The Gleaners and I Matt and Travis move into the 21st century with Varda’s pivotal The Gleaners and I. A massive success upon release in France, Varda’s first digital feature created a media frenzy and helped reenergize the aging filmmaker, catapulting her into the final two decades of her work that produced an extraordinarily productive run of films and art installations. We discuss the film’s merging of digital aesthetics and philosophy with a broader tradition of repurposing discarded food and artifacts, along with the rediscovery of Varda’s significance and reappraisal of her filmography which began in the late 90s and early 2000s. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Instagram @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd
Nov 2, 2024 · 1 hr 59 min
The Complete Varda 17 – One Hundred and One Nights of Simon Cinema
Matt and Travis welcome friend of the pod William Remmers to the show to discuss Varda’s final narrative fictional feature, One Hundred and One Nights of Simon Cinema. Created in celebration of the French’s conveniently defined 100th birthday of film, Varda’s movie features an astonishing number of international stars and film references of every kind you can imagine. We discuss the film’s unmistakable imprint of the unique sensibilities of Varda along with the historical significance of the film paired with its modest idiosyncrasies. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd William Remmers: Instagram | Varda clip
Sep 10, 2024 · 52 min
The Complete Varda 16 – The World of Jacques Demy
Varda completed her trilogy of tributes to her husband with the most straightforward of the three: a documentary covering Demy’s career and his impact on cinema. As expected, however, Varda at her most straightforward is still a little off-kilter, so there are as many pleasurable detours as there are dry facts and clips in this loving documentary. We discuss the film’s balance of Varda and Demy and close out this miniseries with some thoughts on the couple and Varda’s relationship with her husband’s art. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd
Aug 2, 2024 · 1 hr 15 min
The Complete Varda 15 – The Young Girls Turn 25
On this episode, we cover an unusual entry in the Complete catalog: not just a bonus feature, but a bonus feature created for someone else’s movie. Varda revisits her husband’s 1967 film The Young Girls of Rochefort on the 25th anniversary of the film’s release, returning to the seaside town where it was filmed for a celebration of the masterpiece that took over its streets in the 1960s. We discuss both this tribute film and Demy’s work that inspired it, covering the confectionary joy of the original and Varda’s unique perspective and style lent to her husband’s legacy. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd
Jun 2, 2024 · 1 hr 52 min
The Complete Varda 14 – Jacquot de Nantes
Created in the final months of husband Jacques Demy’s life, Varda’s fourteenth feature is one of her most emotionally resonant and visually sumptuous works. On this episode, Matt and Travis discuss the film’s multi-faceted structure as a fictional recreation of Demy’s childhood, a documentary portrait of Demy as an aging and sick adult, and a visual essay on the ways in which Demy’s childhood directly informed his work as one of the most aesthetically dynamic French filmmakers of his generation. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd
Apr 16, 2024 · 1 hr 20 min
The Complete Varda 13 – Kung Fu Master
On the thirteenth episode, Matt and Travis tackle the second half of Varda’s diptych with Jane Birkin. After taking a look at our own unease with the subject matter of this controversial fictional film based on a short story Birkin wrote, we discuss the film’s other themes such as the AIDS epidemic, growing older, and 1980s video games. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd
Feb 25, 2024 · 1 hr 54 min
The Complete Varda 12 – Jane B. par Agnès V.
On the twelfth episode, Matt and Travis welcome longtime Friend of the Show Ericca Long back to discuss Varda’s idiosyncratic portrait of actress, model and icon Jane Birkin. Along with many tangential topics including modern arcades, getting older, and the musical genius of Steely Dan, we discuss the film’s unique blurring of document and fiction and Varda’s insightful use of the many tools at her disposal to present a multifaceted presentation of someone her audience likely believed they already knew everything about. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd Ericca doesn’t have links but wanted to include her deepest thanks to the show and say RIP forever to JB and AV!
Jan 28, 2024 · 1 hr 56 min
The Complete Varda 11 – Vagabond
On the eleventh episode, Matt and Travis welcome Alex Kittle to discuss Vagabond, one of Varda’s most successful and praised films. Alex is a projectionist at the Brattle Theater, one of the greatest and most important repertory theaters in America, in Cambridge, MA. She’s also an accomplished artist as Pan and Scan on Etsy, Ko-Fi, and Behance among other places, with a focus on film and other pop-culture related content. On the episode, we discuss Varda’s empathic portrayal of a woman who has intentionally placed herself on the margins of society and the way this portrait challenges our own personal relationship to the basic social contract we’ve constructed. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd Alex Kittle: Instagram | Letterboxd
Dec 22, 2023 · 1 hr 50 min
The Complete Varda 10 – Documenteur
On the tenth episode, Matt and Travis discuss Documenteur, Varda’s fictional feature pairing with her documentary Mur Murs. A self-described “emotion picture,” Varda’s final film in Hollywood is semi-autobiographical. We discuss the movie’s unique tone merging melancholy and playful meta touches that nod both to Mur Murs and the nature of filmmaking in general, along with the personal and compelling portrayal of a woman’s interiority that makes this one of the more underrated films in her catalog. We also discuss a wide range of shorts Varda made in the period after Documenteur and before her next landmark film. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd
Nov 28, 2023 · 1 hr 39 min
The Complete Varda 9 – Mur Murs
On the ninth episode, Matt and Travis discuss Varda’s documentary on the murals of Los Angeles, Mur Murs. Created virtually simultaneously with the fictional film Documenteur, Mur Murs is a portrait of Los Angeles as a concrete landscape dotted with organic beauty from unusual origins. We discuss the film’s depiction of this much misunderstood city and in particular its marginalized communities that get to shine here, along with Varda’s evolving relationship with the documentary form she has developed throughout her career. The Complete Social: Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd
Sep 25, 2023 · 2 hr 3 min
The Complete Varda 8 – One Sings, the Other Doesn’t
On the eighth episode, Matt and Travis welcome Laura Cannon from the Fatal Femmes podcast to discuss Varda’s self-described “feminist musical,” One Sings, the Other Doesn’t. We discuss the film’s still-relevant issues confronting women, the unique nature of the friendship depicted in the film, and the film’s powerful emotional impact. The Complete Social: Twitter | Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd Fatal Femmes podcast
Aug 12, 2023 · 1 hr 26 min
The Complete Varda 7 – Daguerréotypes
On the seventh episode of The Complete Varda, Matt and Travis discuss the charming documentary Varda made for German television in 1975, Daguerréotypes. A simple profile of the shops and their keepers on the block in Paris where Varda lived until the end of her life, the film also served as a challenge for Varda, who restricted herself to a 200 foot range around her flat in order to stay close to her young son. We discuss this clever juxtaposition of filmic text and performance piece outside of the work, along with the political implications of the film; but we also bask in the glow of a neighborhood’s charm that typified a bygone era even at the time of its filming. The Complete Social: Twitter | Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd
Jul 26, 2023 · 1 hr 23 min
The Complete Varda 6 – Nausicaa
On the sixth episode of the Complete Varda, Matt and Travis discuss the most obscure film in Varda’s filmography, the 1970 made-for-television film Nausicaa. Censored at the time and surviving only in a work print sent to Belgium (with all other materials destroyed and the film never finished), Nausicaa is the story of Varda’s search for meaning in her own history and the contemporary political crisis in Greece. We discuss the film’s fragmented and experimental structure, its political history, and the ways in which Varda uses film as a search for meaning and connection. The Complete Social: Twitter | Facebook | Find us on Threads @thecompletepod! Matt Gasteier: Letterboxd Travis Trudell: Letterboxd