“The Gleaners and I” by Agnes Varda
Agnes Varda – Filming is like Gleaning
For her documentary, “The Gleaners and I,” French documentary Director Agnes Varda turned her mini DV-camera on an old practice — foraging for wheat left after the harvest — to create a portrait of modern day “gleaners,” those hungry people who live on the leftovers the rest of us have discarded, and those, like herself, who create art of the images and materials they collect. Andrea Meyer speaks with the legendary director about connecting with her audience, intuition, editing and cine-writing. The interview was first published on https://www.indiewire.com/
indieWIRE: Gleaning is such an unusual subject. I wonder what drew you to it as the topic for a documentary.
Agn’s Varda: Gleaning itself is not known — is forgotten. The word is pass. So I was intrigued, by these people in the street picking food. And then I thought, what’s happening to the fields of wheat? Nothing is left in the fields of wheat. So I went to the potatoes, and I found these heart-shaped potatoes, and it made me feel good. Made me feel that I was on the right track.
“Filming, especially a documentary, is gleaning. Because you pick what you find; you bend; you go around; you are curious; you try to find out where are things. But, you cannot push the analogy further, because we don’t just film the leftovers.”