The Gleaners and I (Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse )
2000, France, Cert U, 82 mins, Language – French - English Subtitles.
Documentary about the modern-day gleaners: men and women who make use of the things that the rest of us throw out as rubbish.
Agnès Varda was an early adapter to advancements in digital camera technology and was highly receptive to the unpredictable aesthetic outcomes afforded by their flattened image quality. In this documentary, Varda puts herself amongst a thriving scavenging culture living on the fringes of mainstream society, using her lightweight little camera to glean images as her subjects pick remnants from fields, orchards, roadsides, and supermarkets. Gleaning as a practice has been protected by the French constitution since the 16th century, and the urban gleaners Varda depicts are the descendants of those figures immortalised in paintings by Millet and Van Gogh.
Credits
Cast - Agnès Varda, Bodan Litnanski, François Wertheimer
Director - Agnès Varda
Supported by:
Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse is part of the Culture Night Late programme, funded by the Arts Council and the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport under the Night-Time Economy programme with support from Galway City Council Arts Office.
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