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''The Gleaners and I'' (french: Les glaneurs et la glaneuse, lit. "The gleaners and the female gleaner") is a 2000 French
documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...
by
Agnès Varda Agnès Varda (; born Arlette Varda; 30 May 1928 – 29 March 2019) was a Belgian-born French film director, screenwriter, photographer, and artist. Her pioneering work was central to the development of the widely influential French New Wave film ...
that features various kinds of
gleaning Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest. It is a practice described in the Hebrew Bible that became a legall ...
. It was entered into competition at the
2000 Cannes Film Festival The 53rd Cannes Film Festival started on 14 May and ran until 25 May 2000. French film director, screenwriter, and producer Luc Besson was the Jury President. The Palme d'Or went to the Danish film ''Dancer in the Dark'' by Lars von Trier. The fe ...
("Official Selection 2000"), and later went on to win awards around the world. In a 2014 ''
Sight & Sound ''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...
'' poll, film critics voted ''The Gleaners and I'' the eighth best documentary film of all time. In 2016, the film appeared at No. 99 on
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
's list of the 100 greatest films of the 21st century. The film was included for the first time in 2022 on the critics' poll of ''Sight and Sound'''s list of the greatest films of all time, at number 67. In 2002, Varda released a followup, ''The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later'' (french: Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse... deux ans après), in which she revisited some of the people and themes of this film.


The subjects

For the film, Varda traveled throughout rural and urban
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
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 Michelin (; ; full name: ) is a French multinational tyre manufacturing company based in Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes ''région'' of France. It is the second largest tyre manufacturer in the world behind Bridgestone and la ...
2-star chef who gleans and a wealthy restaurant owner whose ancestors were gleaners; the owners of a few
vineyard A vineyard (; also ) is a plantation of grape-bearing vines, grown mainly for winemaking, but also raisins, table grapes and non-alcoholic grape juice. The science, practice and study of vineyard production is known as viticulture. Vineyards ...
s, among whom are
psychoanalyst PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: + . is a set of Theory, theories and Therapy, therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a bo ...
Jean Laplanche Jean Laplanche (; 21 June 1924 – 6 May 2012) was a French author, psychoanalyst and winemaker. Laplanche is best known for his work on psychosexual development and Sigmund Freud's seduction theory, and wrote more than a dozen books on p ...
and the great-grandson of
physiologist Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical a ...
and
chronophotographer Chronophotography is a photographic technique from the Victorian era which captures a number of phases of movements. The best known chronophotography works were mostly intended for the scientific study of locomotion, to discover practical informa ...
Étienne-Jules Marey Étienne-Jules Marey (; 5 March 1830, Beaune, Côte-d'Or – 15 May 1904, Paris) was a French scientist, physiologist and chronophotographer. His work was significant in the development of cardiology, physical instrumentation, aviation, cinema ...
; artists that incorporate recycled materials into their work, including
Louis Pons Louis Pons (born 1927) is a French collage artist. He specializes in reliefs and assemblages made entirely from discarded objects and junk. In Agnès Varda's documentary ''The Gleaners and I'', Pons explains his artistic process and understandi ...
, 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. In order to find the subjects, Varda claimed her method was to ask all the people she knew to talk to everyone—"the peasants, the owners, the farmers, the fruit growers—about our film. I said to my assistant, 'Call everybody you know.'" Referring to these subjects, Varda stated that "The more I met them, the more I could see I had nothing to make as a statement. They make the statement; they explain the subject better than anybody."


Technique

''Gleaners'' was Varda's first film to use a
digital camera A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile device ...
. It film is notable for its use of a
hand-held camera Hand-held camera or hand-held shooting is a filmmaking and video production technique in which a camera is held in the camera operator's hands as opposed to being mounted on a tripod or other base. Hand-held cameras are used because they are conve ...
and for its unusual camera angles and techniques. Varda referred to her filmmaking process as "cinécriture" ("cinema-writing"), saying that the process of encountering subjects, choosing shots and music, editing, and writing narration is "all chance working with me, all this is the film writing that I often talk about."Zeitgeist Films. As such, she said the objects she found, such as the heart-shaped potato, were " trokesof luck", as were some of the shots. For example, in one scene, Varda forgot to turn off her camera, so, as the camera hung at her side, it filmed the shifting ground and the dangling lens cap. Varda chose to put this footage in the finished film with a jazz music background, calling it "The Dance of the Lens Cap". In addition to footage relating to "gleaning", ''Gleaners'' also includes more self-referential footage, such as a scene in which Varda films herself combing her newly discovered gray hair, or the several closeups of her aging hands. In one scene, she "catches" numerous trucks on the freeway, first encircling each truck by putting her hand in front of the camera lens and then closing her hand as she drives past "just to play."


Production

The film was filmed between September 1999 and April 2000 in
Beauce Beauce may refer to: * Beauce, France, a natural region in northern France * Beaucé, a commune in the Ille-et-Vilaine department, Brittany, France * Beauce, Quebec, an historical and cultural region of Canada ** Beauce (electoral district), a fed ...
, Jura,
Provence Provence (, , , , ; oc, Provença or ''Prouvènço'' , ) is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the Italian border to the east; it is bor ...
, the
Pyrenees The Pyrenees (; es, Pirineos ; french: Pyrénées ; ca, Pirineu ; eu, Pirinioak ; oc, Pirenèus ; an, Pirineus) is a mountain range straddling the border of France and Spain. It extends nearly from its union with the Cantabrian Mountains to C ...
, and the suburbs of
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
. In the press kit, Varda wrote that she and her team would travel and shoot for roughly two weeks at a time and immediately proceed to edit while scouting for additional locations. She also traveled alone to get many of her "gleaned" shots and would go to markets between 2 and 4 p.m. Varda produced the film under Cine-Tamaris, a company she founded in 1954 and that had produced most of her previous films. It was distributed by
Zeitgeist Films Zeitgeist Films is a New York-based distribution company founded in 1988 which acquires and distributes films from the U.S. and around the world. In 2017, Zeitgeist entered into a multi-year strategic alliance with film distributor Kino Lorber. ...
in New York, a company that has distributed films from such directors as
Christopher Nolan Christopher Edward Nolan (born 30 July 1970) is a British-American filmmaker. Known for his lucrative Cinema of the United States, Hollywood blockbusters with complex storytelling, Nolan is considered a leading filmmaker of the 21st century. ...
and
the Brothers Quay Stephen and Timothy Quay ( ; born June 17, 1947) are American identical twin brothers and stop-motion animators who are better known as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. They were also the recipients of the 1998 Drama Desk Award for Outstandin ...
.


Release & reception

''The Gleaners and I'' debuted out of competition at the
2000 Cannes Film Festival The 53rd Cannes Film Festival started on 14 May and ran until 25 May 2000. French film director, screenwriter, and producer Luc Besson was the Jury President. The Palme d'Or went to the Danish film ''Dancer in the Dark'' by Lars von Trier. The fe ...
("Official Selection 2000"). Later that year, it had its North American premiere at the
Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a permane ...
. It was acclaimed by critics, achieving a score of 83/100 on
Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
and a 92% approval rating on
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
. Peter Rainer dubbed the film "lyrically ramshackle". Edward Guthmann of the ''
San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...
'' argued that "Varda's subject matter is surprisingly rich, but it's her own energetic, curious nature that gives the film its snap." In the ''
Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
'', Michael Wilmington wrote: "In its frames, we see arda'sempathy, skill, curiosity, wit, poetry and passion for life: everything she has gleaned from a lifetime of love and movies." In Paris, the film attracted 43,000 movie-goers during "the first nine weeks of its summer release."Darke, Chris. "Refuseniks (Agnes Varda's DV Documentary, the 'Gleaners and I')." ''SIGHT AND SOUND'' 11.1 (2001): 30-3. Print. In some places, it was in theaters for over eight months.
Haden Guest , Haden Guest (born 1971) in Geneva, New York, is a film historian, archivist and curator. He is Director of the Harvard Film Archive and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art, Film and Visual Studies, Harvard University Harvard Unive ...
, the director of the
Harvard Film Archive The Harvard Film Archive (HFA) is a film archive and cinema located in the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dedicated to the collection, preservation and exhibition of film, the HFA houses a c ...
, hailed the film as "one of Varda's most powerful and popular films"(47). Even Varda, herself, remarked at the film's success, saying: "I've never in my entire career felt that people have loved a film of mine as much as this one.”


Awards

The film won awards around the world, including top honors at the
Chicago International Film Festival The Chicago International Film Festival is an annual film festival held every fall. Founded in 1964 by Michael Kutza, it is the longest-running competitive film festival in North America. Its logo is a stark, black and white close up of the comp ...
, Prague
One World Film Festival One World ( Czech: ''Jeden svět'') is the largest human rights film festival in the world (125,947 spectators in 2018), held annually in Prague and other 36 cities of the Czech Republic, with a selection later shown in Brussels and other countries ...
, and
European Film Awards The European Film Awards (or European Film Academy Awards) have been presented annually since 1988 by the European Film Academy to recognize excellence in European cinematic achievements. The awards are given in 19 categories, of which the most ...
, and from the
National Society of Film Critics The National Society of Film Critics (NSFC) is an American film critic organization. The organization is known for its highbrow tastes, and its annual awards are one of the most prestigious film critics awards in the United States. In January 2014, ...
(USA),
New York Film Critics Circle The New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) is an American film critic organization founded in 1935 by Wanda Hale from the New York ''Daily News''. Its membership includes over 30 film critics from New York-based daily and weekly newspapers, magaz ...
,
Boston Society of Film Critics The Boston Society of Film Critics (BSFC) is an organization of film reviewers from Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. History The BSFC was formed in 1981 to make “Boston’s unique critical perspective heard on a national and internati ...
,
Los Angeles Film Critics Association The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) is an American film critic organization founded in 1975. Background Its membership comprises film critics from Los Angeles-based print and electronic media. In December of each year, the organiza ...
,
French Syndicate of Cinema Critics The French Syndicate of Cinema Critics (french: Syndicat français de la critique de cinéma et des films de télévision) has, each year since 1946, awarded a prize (" Prix de la critique", English: "Critics Prize"), the Prix Méliès, to the be ...
, and
Online Film Critics Society The Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) is an international professional association of online film journalists, historians and scholars who publish their work on the World Wide Web. The organization was founded in January 1997 by Harvey S. Karten ...
. It was also "declared the best French film of 2000 by the French Union of Film Critics, which broke with tradition by not choosing a dramatic film."Rich, B. Ruby. "Gleaners Over Gladiators." ''The Nation'' 272.14 (2001): 33. Print.


Cinematic significance

Ruby Rich believes that the appeal of ''The Gleaners and I'' "is due in considerable part to Agnès Varda’s own presence." Guest argues that the ease with which Varda blends documentary and narrative technique is a key reason her films continue to be so relevant, especially "as we witness a resurgence of documentary and a particularly strong interest in hybridized modes of fiction/nonfiction cinema"(48). Jake Wilson, on the other hand, conjectures that Varda, perhaps not fully realizing it, tapped into the cultural zeitgeist and constructed a film that "embodies a quasi-anarchist ethos" built on a "resistance to consumerism, a suspicion of authority, and a desire to reconnect politics with everyday life." One notable aspect of the film is that, in making a film about gleaning, Varda recognized that she, too, was a gleaner. "I'm not poor, I have enough to eat," she said, but she pointed 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." To do her gleaning, Varda chose to use a digital video camera, and there are several scenes in which she shows and discusses the camera itself. In so doing, she transforms a film about waste into a reflexive meditation on the art of digital documentary. While Varda did not pioneer the reflexive documentary (that honor goes to
Dziga Vertov Dziga Vertov (russian: Дзига Вертов, born David Abelevich Kaufman, russian: Дави́д А́белевич Ка́уфман, and also known as Denis Kaufman; – 12 February 1954) was a Soviet Union, Soviet pioneer documentary f ...
and his 1929 masterpiece ''
Man with a Movie Camera ''Man with a Movie Camera'' (russian: Человек с киноаппаратом, translit=Chelovek s kinoapparatom) is an experimental 1929 Soviet silent documentary film, directed by Dziga Vertov, filmed by his brother Mikhail Kaufman, and ...
''), her work had long been notable for its "reflexive and first-person tendencies." Another factor that makes ''The Gleaners and I'' especially noteworthy in the context of cinematic history is the fact that a filmmaker of Varda's stature chose to abandon high-end film equipment for low-end digital video. For Varda, the decision was in many ways a practical one. As she noted in an interview with Melissa Anderson for '' Cinéaste'', "I had the feeling that this is the camera that would bring me back to the early short films I made in 1957 and 1958. I felt free at that time. With the new digital camera, I felt I could film myself, get involved as a filmmaker.”Anderson, M., and A. Varda. "The Modest Gesture of the Filmmaker - an Interview with Agnes Varda." CINEASTE 26.4 (2001): 24-7. Varda's choice to make a camcorder a primary tool of production, as well as a central element of her film, can be seen as an implicit, if not explicit, recognition of a new digital era in documentary filmmaking. Yet, for Varda, “the first-person, artisan film-making encouraged by digital video asnothing new.” While she acknowledged video's convenience, she downplayed any larger significance: "What's missing in all this talk of digital technologies is the understanding that ..they're not ends in themselves." For Varda, digital cameras and editing equipment were simply tools that enabled her to film by herself and get closer to people "and to collapse the time lapse between wanting to film something and actually being able to do it."


See also

* ''
The Gleaners ''The Gleaners'' (''Des glaneuses'') is an oil painting by Jean-François Millet completed in 1857 in art, 1857. It depicts three peasant women gleaning a field of stray stalks of wheat after the harvest. The painting is famous for featuring in ...
'' painting by
Jean-François Millet Jean-François Millet (; 4 October 1814 – 20 January 1875) was a French artist and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his paintings of peasant farmers and can be categorized as part of the Realism ...
completed in 1857. * ''
The Gleaners ''The Gleaners'' (''Des glaneuses'') is an oil painting by Jean-François Millet completed in 1857 in art, 1857. It depicts three peasant women gleaning a field of stray stalks of wheat after the harvest. The painting is famous for featuring in ...
'', a 2019 studio album by American jazz bassist
Larry Grenadier Larry Grenadier (born February 6, 1966 in San Francisco) is an American jazz double bassist. Early life Grenadier's father, Albert, was a trumpet player, and his two brothers, Phil and Steve, play trumpet and guitar, respectively. Grenadier be ...
, inspired by the film.


References


Notes

* Ebert, Roger. "The Gleaners and I." rogerebert.com. rogerebert.com, 11 May 2001. Web. 20 Nov 2010. * "The Gleaners and I." IMDbPro. Amazon.com, Inc, n.d. Web. 6 Nov 2010. * "Official Selection 2000." Festival de Cannes. Festival de Cannes, n.d. Web. 20 Nov 2010. * "Press Kit." ZeitgeistFilms.com. Zeitgeist Films. n. d. Web. 12 Nov 2010. * Wilson, Jake. "Trash And Treasure: The Gleaners And I." Senses of Cinema 23 (2002): n. pag. Web. 12 Nov 2010.


External links

*
Reviews and information from the Rotten Tomatoes website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gleaners and I, The European Film Awards winners (films) 2000 films 2000 documentary films French documentary films 2000s French-language films Films directed by Agnès Varda 2000s French films