The Gleaners and I

Infobox_Film
name = The Gleaners and I
("Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse")


caption =
writer = Agnès Varda
starring = Bodan Litnanski, François Wertheimer, others
director = Agnès Varda
producer =
distributor =
released = 2000 (France)
runtime = 82 mins
language = French, English
budget = N/A
imdb_id = 0247380

"The Gleaners and I" is a French documentary by Agnès Varda that features the practice of Gleaning. It was released as "Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse" in France in 2000.

The Subjects

The film tracks a series of gleaners as they hunt for food, knicknacks, and personal connection. Varda travels French countryside and city to find and film not only field gleaners, but also urban gleaners and those connected to gleaners, including a wealthy restaurant owner whose ancestors were gleaners. The film spends time capturing the many aspects of gleaning and the many people who glean to survive. One such person is the teacher named Alain, an urban gleaner with a master's degree who teaches French to immigrants.Varda's other subjects include artists who incorporate recycled materials into their work, symbols she discovers during her filming (including a clock without hands and a heart-shaped potato), and the French law regarding gleaning. Varda also spends time with Louis Pons, who explains how junk is a "cluster of possibilities".

Technique

The film is notable for its use of a hand-held camera and for its unusual camera angles and techniques. In one particular scene Varda, the filmmaker, forgets to turn off her camera. As the camera hangs to her side the filming proceeds, and the viewer can see the shifting ground and the dangling lens cap with a jazz music background. Varda calls this shot "The Dance of the Lens Cap".

In "The Gleaners and I", Varda films herself combing her newly discovered gray hair, and there are many visuals of her aging hands. She frequently "catches" trucks on the freeway, placing her hand in front of the camera in the ASL sign for "o", with the truck in the center of her hand, then closing in on them as she drives past them.

Much of this footage is woven into the film to show that Varda, as a film maker, is also a gleaner. This concept is made explicit in the French title, "Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse", which could be translated as "the gleaners and the gleaneress".

External links

*imdb title|0247380
* [http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/gleaners_and_i/ Reviews and information from the Rotten Tomatoes website]