Les glaneurs et la glaneuse
This most uncommon documentary begins with the definition of gleaner and images of some of the most famous paintings of gleaners of bygone times -- peasant women stooping to gather the leftover grain and produce left in the fields after farmers complete their harveest.
Filmed with a hand-held digital camera by Agnès Varda who also narrates and interviews various rural gleaners -- poor, well-off, gypsies, and charity volunteers -- in the French countryside, the farmers whose fields they pick, and legal experts opining on the laws of ownership.
I found particulary interesting the bits about those who glean the tons of left-over potatoes -- those that never made it into the harvest trucks, the overly large, the damaged, and the odd shaped potatoes -- because I worked the Idaho potato harvest in 2001 driving a 10-wheel, 11-ton 1958 Ford side-load truck in the fields to receive the fresh potatoes spewed up by the digging machines. Some days people waited along the side of the road with burlap bags ready to comb the field after the mechanical harvesting was done. On occasion, I even gleaned the fields for potatoes that I then baked when I got back to my quarters after driving a rickety, bumpy old truck for 12 to 18 hours. It was the food of the gods to me.
Varda then moves from the countryside into Paris to examine the modern urban gleaners who "harvest" their daily food from dumpsters and the sweepings after market. She also explores those who salvage non-edible cast-offs left at the curb: refrigerators, ovens, trinkets, dolls, bicycles, and other items that can be rehabbed back to functionality, sold, used in art, and for other purposes.
The DVD includes a one-hour follow-up filmed two years after the original film showing some of those interviewed, their reactions to the film, and what they are doing now.
Subtitled.
Run time: 1 hour, 22 minutes
Not rated by MPAA.
My personal rating: B
This most uncommon documentary begins with the definition of gleaner and images of some of the most famous paintings of gleaners of bygone times -- peasant women stooping to gather the leftover grain and produce left in the fields after farmers complete their harveest.
Filmed with a hand-held digital camera by Agnès Varda who also narrates and interviews various rural gleaners -- poor, well-off, gypsies, and charity volunteers -- in the French countryside, the farmers whose fields they pick, and legal experts opining on the laws of ownership.
I found particulary interesting the bits about those who glean the tons of left-over potatoes -- those that never made it into the harvest trucks, the overly large, the damaged, and the odd shaped potatoes -- because I worked the Idaho potato harvest in 2001 driving a 10-wheel, 11-ton 1958 Ford side-load truck in the fields to receive the fresh potatoes spewed up by the digging machines. Some days people waited along the side of the road with burlap bags ready to comb the field after the mechanical harvesting was done. On occasion, I even gleaned the fields for potatoes that I then baked when I got back to my quarters after driving a rickety, bumpy old truck for 12 to 18 hours. It was the food of the gods to me.
Varda then moves from the countryside into Paris to examine the modern urban gleaners who "harvest" their daily food from dumpsters and the sweepings after market. She also explores those who salvage non-edible cast-offs left at the curb: refrigerators, ovens, trinkets, dolls, bicycles, and other items that can be rehabbed back to functionality, sold, used in art, and for other purposes.
The DVD includes a one-hour follow-up filmed two years after the original film showing some of those interviewed, their reactions to the film, and what they are doing now.
Subtitled.
Run time: 1 hour, 22 minutes
Not rated by MPAA.
My personal rating: B
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