- Overview
Varda focuses her eye on gleaners: those who scour already-reaped fields for the odd potato or turnip. Her investigation leads from forgotten corners of the French countryside to off-hours at the green markets of Paris, following those who insist on finding a use for that which society has cast off, whether out of necessity or activism.
- Release Date
07 July 2000
- DirectingAgnès Varda
- Budget
$0.00
- Revenue
$0.00
- Stars
Videos
User Reviews
See morebadelf
10 June 2022
One doesn't normally use the word "fun" and documentary in the same sentence, but Varga has such a unique personality and style that her films are actually fun. The Gleaners and I may be the most fun and yet, Varga delivers the political message with Vaseline. At the same time, we get an education on found art.
tmdb28039023
03 September 2022
The Gleaners and I is a documentary about gleaning as both a physical and metaphysical activity. Director Agnès Varda is herself a meta-gleaner; she’s a gleaner of gleaners the same way that Jesus was a fisher of men. The film is a confluence of the practical and the artistic. Many of the people in the movie glean to eat (their children sing a revealing ditty: “Monday, potatoes/Tuesday, potatoes/Wednesday, potatoes again/Thursday, potatoes/Friday, potatoes/Saturday, potatoes again/Sunday, potatoes au gratin”). For others is a chosen lifestyle, or a hipster hobby. And for Varda, it is an aesthetic endeavor; “I'm not poor, I have enough to eat,” she said in an interview, pointing to “another kind of gleaning, which is artistic gleaning. You pick ideas, you pick images, you pick emotions from other people, and then you make it into a film.” Thus, while most of the gleaners in the film collect objects they can use, Varda chooses a useless object – a handless clock – and repurposes it as an ornamental piece. The Gleaners and I is almost 100% wheat except for the chaff of self-indulgence. The film gains a lot of momentum when Varda simply observes, and one of its greatest pleasures is how the filmmaker makes room for spontaneous diversions, becoming sidetracked in the pursuit of beautiful things and interesting people. This momentum is lost when Varda points the camera at herself, a mistake that is obvious to everyone but her; in fact, in a follow-up released two years after the original film, one of her interviewees tells her, after watching the documentary, that the scenes she devotes to herself are “unnecessary”. That said, Varda does deserve a lot of credit for her ability to find beauty in the most unexpected places, both in the countryside and in the city, filming with one hand, and gleaning with the other.
More Like This
To See If I'm Smiling
Israel is the only country in the world where 18-year-old girls are drafted for compulsory military service. The frank testimonials of six female...
See more
Prater
Vienna’s Prater is an amusement park and a desire machine. No mechanical invention, no novel idea or sensational innovation could escape...
See more
China's Terracotta Army
The exhibition "Qin Shihuang: Chinese Terracotta Warriors" featuring hundreds of palace-level cultural relics featuring terracotta warriors will be...
See more
Uprising!
"Levante" won Canal Futura's annual documentary competition in 2014 and was filmed in Brazil, Mexico, Japan, Gaza and Hong Kong. It first aired at...
See more
Megacities
Megacities is a documentary about the slums of five different metropolitan cities.
See more
What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?
Amanda is a divorced woman who makes a living as a photographer. During the Fall of the year Amanda begins to see the world in new and different...
See more
One Day Pina Asked...
Chantal Akerman followed famous Choreographer Pina Bausch and her company of dancers, The Tanzteater Wuppertal, for five weeks while they were on...
See more
Panomundo Part 1: The Evolution of the Steelpan
Slavery may have been the catalyst, but culture and passion formed this sound in Trinidad & Tobago. The steelpan can take the claim of being...
See more
Forest of the Dancing Spirits
“In the beginning, women lived apart, unaware of the existence of men. Until one day, when the first woman, Toli, who was brave and adventurous...
See more
Margaret Mee and the Moonflower
Margaret Mee and the Moonflower is a documentary about the life and work of the botanical illustrator, Margaret Mee, a pioneer and a visionary, one...
See more
A Life Without Pain
The film explores the daily lives of three children with Congenital insensitivity to pain, a rare genetic disorder shared by just a hundred people...
See more
First Edition
First Edition is a 1977 American short documentary film about the Baltimore Sun directed by Helen Whitney. It was nominated for an Academy Award...
See more
Cat Daddies
Man has a new best friend in this heartwarming portrait of nine men whose lives have been forever changed by their proud love of cats.
See moreA Bit Of Scarlet
A Bit of Scarlet excavates clips from Britain's cinema archives to create a moving and humorous testament to the closeted gay and lesbian images...
See more
On Call
At the consulting service for immigrants at the Avicenne Hospital in suburban Paris, we observe the sorrow and powerlessness of the immigrants who...
See moreTruffaut au présent
Truffaut au présent is a film divided in three shorts; throughout "Acteurs", "Actrices" and "Couples" we explore François Truffaut's legacy and...
See more
Making Dazed
This documentary reunites the cast of the 1993 film "Dazed and Confused", and features behind-the-scenes footage from the making of the film. A...
See more
Beyond the Powder: The Legacy of the First Women's Cross-Country Air Race
The first Women’s Air Derby was flown in 1929 with brave women making history by breaking into a competition that was thought to be for men only...
See more