Screening of “The Gleaners and I”

Fri 04 May 2012, 6 pm
DOCLAB

From DOCLAB:
Doclab cordially invites you to the screening of “The Gleaners and I” by French documentary filmmaker, Agnès Varda. After seeing a famous painting by François Milet, Les Graneuses (“The Gleaners”), of a group of women stooped over picking up leftover stalks of wheat, French documentary film maker Agnès Varda began to wonder about modern-day gleaners — the people who scavenge their food from the scraps that our modern industrial society discards as waste.

She wondered about trash in our modern times: “Who finds a use for it? How? Can one live on the leftovers of others?” The result, The Gleaners and I, is a moving depiction of the people who — after the harvest — pick through the dirt to find potatoes and tomatoes left behind, scour the beach for oysters washed up after storms, pick grapes and figs that farmers reject, and go “dumpster diving” to recover discarded loaves of bread, sandwiches and other food. Varda’s film, released in 2000, is essentially a road-trip to various places in France where gleaners prowl for leftover food. It must have required a lot of patience, resourcefulness and charm for Varda to identify so many different types of gleaners and then earn their trust.

Agnès Varda (born 30 May 1928) is a French film director and professor at the European Graduate School. Her movies, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary — with a distinct experimental style.

Languages: The film is in French with Vietnamese subtitle.

The screening is non-profit and aims for studies and research only.

Free entrance.

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