french films > The Gleaners And I, Two Years Later

The Gleaners And I, Two Years Later

The Gleaners and I

The Gleaners And I, Two Years Later

Review score: * * * * *

cast: Documentaire

year: 2000

colour: yes

certificate: U

director: Agnès Varda

runtime: 78

Genre: Documentary A refreshing documentary about social marginals in France. Why do food producers throw so much away when people go hungry? Agnès Varda, gleaner of images, follows other gleaners, people who collect what other people throw away, food and junk. Thought-provoking, this social and poetic documentary has been rewarded in many festivals.

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".

This film has an unexpected brief interview with the psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche.

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