The Gleaners and I

Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse

2000 · Agnès Varda

For the film, Varda traveled throughout rural and urban France to document various types of gleaners who, whether due to necessity or for artistic or ethical reasons, gather crops left in the field after the harvest or food and objects that have been thrown out. She also included some of the people on the peripheries of the gleaning culture. There are interviews with, among others, a Michelin 2-star chef who gleans and a wealthy restaurant owner whose ancestors were gleaners; the owners of a few vineyards, among whom are psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche and the great-grandson of physiologist and chronophotographer Étienne-Jules Marey; artists that incorporate recycled materials into their work, including Louis Pons, who explains that junk is a "cluster of possibilities"; lawyers who discuss the French laws regarding gleaning versus abandoned property; and an urban gleaner named Alain, who has a master's degree and teaches French to immigrants. Two of the most notable symbols from the film are the numerous heart-shaped potatoes Varda finds in a field and a clock without hands she finds on the street.

Director

Agnès Varda

Starring

Bodan Litnanski, François Wertheimer