Slideshow
THE GLEANERS AND I
France, 2000
Directed by Agnès Varda
WINNER Mélies Award – Best French Film, 2000
In French with English subtitles
Approx. 82 min. 35mm/DCP.
Varda used a consumer-grade digital video camera to create one of her most beloved and acclaimed films, a truly artisan work of documentary cinema, with a style and technique that perfectly suits its subject. THE GLEANERS AND I is a playful, political, and poetic portrait of life on the margins. Turning her compassionate, ever-curious lens on scavengers, artists, and on herself, it continues in the essayist tradition of Varda's earlier films—a warm and witty discourse on, among other things, the nature of our consumerist society and the role of creativity in survival.
Presented with support from The George Fasel Memorial Fund for Classic French Cinema
Reviews
“Like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Varda makes her presence felt both behind and in front of the camera lens. Her self-presentation as a small round figure with a slightly wrinkled face and mottled skin visually rhymes with the speckled, heart-shaped potatoes abandoned on the field because they are considered unsuitable for the supermarket.”
– Carrie Rickey, A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda
“Both a diary and a kind of extended essay on poverty, thrift, and the curious place of scavenging in French history and culture... studded with found metaphors and serendipitous insights.”
– A.O. Scott, The New York Times