French Avant-garde filmmaker and documentarian, Agnes Varda trains her ever-seeking eye on "gleaners", those who pick at already harvested fields for the … Describing herself as a gleaner of ideas and images from interior as well as exterior journeys gives the director a special connection with her subjects in this honest and intriguing documentary. Get unlimited DVD Movies & TV Shows delivered to your door … The Gleaners and I explores gleaning — the act of collecting food from farmers’ leftover crops after they have been commercially harvested. “Gleaning” as a homely figure for resistance and appropriation certainly has a … But gleaners are largely forbidden in the Burgundy wine region, where surplus grapes are deliberately thrown on the ground to keep foragers away. Rent The Gleaners and I (2000) starring Bodan Litnanski and Agnès Varda on DVD and Blu-ray. Synopsis. It is a late-career personal essay by a filmmaker whose personal touch was incubated in one of the most personal of all national cinemas, the French New Wave of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. In 2000, Agnès Varda travelled the French countryside to study the world of foragers and scavengers called The Gleaners. Directed by Agnès Varda • 2000 • France Starring Agnès Varda Agnès Varda’s extraordinary late-career renaissance began with this wonderfully idiosyncratic, self-reflexive documentary in which the French cinema icon explores the world of modern-day gleaners: those living on the margins who survive by foraging for what society throws away. Agnès Varda entered the extraordinarily rich final phase of her legendary career with this casually brilliant documentary-cum-self portrait. In 2000, Agnès Varda travelled the French countryside to study the world of foragers and scavengers called The Gleaners. The Gleaners and I, it is called, and the title emphasizes the autobiographical element in this small, compassionate film. Varda's city scavengers rifle through hastily abandoned open markets, restaurant Dumpsters, and piles of used … Agnès Varda’s extraordinary late-career renaissance began with this wonderfully idiosyncratic, self-reflexive documentary in which the French cinema icon explores the world of modern-day gleaners: those living on the margins who survive by foraging for what society throws away. Varda’s rumination on this art of “living off the leftovers of others” finds inspiration in both past and present, rural and urban, the political and the highly personal. The Gleaners And I doesn’t make such heavy weather of the point, but Varda is careful to establish that historically gleaning has been “women’s work” – even if the majority of present-day gleaners in the film are male. Camera in hand, Varda interviews those for whom gleaning is a way of life, or an encompassing philosophy.