EIGHTY-FOUR-YEAR-OLD French director Agns Varda is one of the mothers of invention and over the course of her life she has invented and reinvented herself, from photographer to acclaimed "godmother" of New Wave or Left Bank cinema to installation artist.

Calling herself "grandma punk" (she wears bright purple socks and red shoes), she spoke with humor about her creative journey on a stop in Shanghai for a French film exhibition, which included some of her works.

A major retrospective of her work - photo stills, film and installation - was held earlier in Beijing and then Wuhan, along with film screenings.

The French New Wave is notable for conscious rejection of classical cinema forms and focus on youthful iconoclasm. Varda's precursor films have a distinctly experimental style involving documentary realism and addressing feminist and social issues as well as time, aging and memory.

"I'm jealous of the cats that have nine lives, but I doubt I am going to have a fourth one," Varda said, referring to her installation art career. She calls it more age-appropriate and less strenuous than photography and filmmaking. Her short hair is white and brown and she jokes that it's "half natural, half artificial." Media have compared it to chocolate and vanilla ice cream.

The exhibition featured some of her most famous installations, such as the heart-shaped potatoes she collected and her half-century-old pictures of China. They were taken in 1957, during her first trip to China.

Although well-known as a film director (and the mother, grandmother and godmother) of French New Wave (or Left Bank) cinema, Varda began as a professional photographer.

Born in 1928 in Belgium, she moved to France with her family in 1940 and studied at the école du Louvre with a focus on art history and at école des Beaux-Arts with a focus on photography.

She then worked as a photographer at the Théatre National Populaire in Paris. She joined a group of French socialists and professionals invited by then Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai for a trip around China in 1957, when China was still a relatively closed country.

"I was supposed to be a witness with the pictures as a photographer," Varda recalled in a recent interview. Instead of spending all the time with the group visiting factories, she took trips by herself to see the real people.

"I wanted to see how the new China in 1957 integrated its traditions, not only opera, but also the circus, shadow puppet (pi ying xi), all these things." She was intrigued by "A Journey to the West" (Xi You Ji), saying, "I was so fascinated by the travel of a monkey, a pig and two monks that I followed it everywhere I could find it."

That trip to China took two months, from northeast China to Yunnan Province in the south. She took a boat down the Yangtze River from Chongqing and stopped in Wuhan, Hubei Province, then going on to Shanghai. She focused not only on big cities but also on the countryside where she spent a lot of time, taking candid and historic pictures of sweeping change. Some pictures were in color, very rare in China at that time.

In her retrospective exhibition, Varda's China photos are shown for the first time in China. Almost all the scenes have disappeared, especially in big cities, as buildings were demolished to make way for new structures and the countryside gave way to urban expansion. The State Archives Administration would like copies of her photos. At the time, she gave many pictures to the government, but over the years they were lost. She has agreed to provide pictures.

"This time I'm only staying in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, but I wish I could go to the countryside," she said. "I don't even know if I am in China now - buildings, freeways, KFC and McDonald's everywhere. For me it is a shame that modernization has killed the pleasure (of original settings). I'm sorry that in Beijing they destroyed almost everything that they might have kept like before," she said.

"People like to travel because they want to see something that looks like the last century, but in Beijing we have no idea what China looked like before. I could not find anything that I saw 50 years ago."

New Wave precursor

Films are another important part of her trip to China and cinematography was her second life and second career. She jumped into filmmaking 1954 without any experience or training. However, her first film "La Pointe Courte" (1954) set in a fishing village was a success and made her the mother of French New Wave.

Three years later she would inspire filmmakers such as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.

She was married to famous French director Jacques Demy, known especially for "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg." They never worked together.

Her notable films include "Cleo from 5 to 7" (1962) "The Beaches of Agnès" (2008), "The Vagabond" (1985), "Jacquot de Nantes" (1991), "The Gleaners and I" (2000 and 2002), and several short films.

She has won numerous awards, including the Golden Lion of the Venice Film Festival in 1985 for her documentary-style feature film "The Vagabond" and the Cesar Award in 2009 for best documentary film, "The Beaches of Agnès."

"I've won many, many awards, but the real award for me is when somebody, at the end of the world, speaks of one of my films," she said. "In terms of quantity, I'm not successful, to be honest," Varda said, "but as for quality, I have an incredibly good feeling."

"Just like music, there are big musical orchestras, but there also have to be some small music chambers. My films are like the music chambers," she said. "I never made movies like 'Titanic' - I really admire those big films, for example, the famous 'Godfather' series. They are beautifully made, but the story ... they are just ugly, ugly to me - one mafia against another mafia, kill, kill, kill ..."

Varda's films are like a "key to real life," famed director Jia Zhangke said at the opening of Varda's exhibition in Beijing last month. "You can see plenty of secret sides of life in her films ... And if you understand life, you'll better understand her film language between reality and the abstract world. Also, her successful documentary like 'The Gleaners and I' gives us, the Chinese independent directors, more confidence to continue our work."

Varda has faithful fans all over the world.

"I like those pirated DVDs in China," she told Shanghai reporters, laughing.

"They give people more chance to watch my films. That's good. I even found a DVD of one of my films with Chinese subtitles! I couldn't find it in France."

One of the largest Chinese video websites, Sohu TV, just bought rights to Varda's films and there have been millions of views.

Feminist themes recur in her films.

"I was a feminist since I was a child. I grew up with four brothers and sisters and I didn't think my brother was any stronger than me. Being feminist doesn't mean being against man. We just still have lots to fight - even in countries where women have the vote, we still have the problems like women's right in birth control, not to mention in African countries where female circumcision (genital mutilation) still exists."

Installation art

Starting in 2003, Varda turned a new page in her artistic life, shifting to installation visual art. Her works have been displayed at famous galleries and in biennales in Venice and Lyons. As an artist who keeps reinventing her career and life, Varda says all these changes happened "naturally."

"Sometimes I asked myself, why films? To be honest, as a 25-year-old, I knew hardly 10 films. I have no knowledge of cinema. I have never been an assistant of directors," she said. "I'm really self-taught. It came from somewhere I don't know. But my knowledge of painting, my knowledge of trying to understand painting was my best teacher. As a photographer, I understand lens, depth and space."

"So I threw myself into writing something like a script. I thought I would just throw it in a drawer. But with some friends, we organized to shoot my first film. On the first day of shooting, I knew it was what I wanted to do from then on." That was in 1954.

The heart-shaped potatoes she collected during the shooting of "The Gleaners and I" were projected on three screens at the Venice Biennale. She said she was touched by how the humble vegetable could be presented in the meaningful shape of a heart, which relates to affection everywhere.

"This kind of work is more than cinema, but is related to cinema." she said. "When my beloved cat Zgougou died, I made a tomb for it and decorated it with shells and flowers, and I made videos for that. This kind of small things inspired me."

"So my third life started naturally. It suits me well now. Because of my age it's difficult to shoot films and installation art only takes a few days. I have to adjust my work according to my capacity. It's wise to know what you can do."

Her family is connected with film. Her son Mathieu Demy is also a director and her daughter Rosalie Varda, who designed costumes for her father's films, now helps Agnes Varda on her art works.