The Gleaners and I (Les Glaneurs et La Glaneuse)

Presented by Dear Future, a live cinema organisation. Dear Future explores ways of thinking into the future by bringing together film, conversation and creativity.

In this warm and witty film, Agnès Varda gathers together objects, ideas and people to infuse a sense of care and beauty in what is usually overlooked.

To make the film, she spent a year criss-crossing the French countryside with a hand-held digital video camera and a small production crew. They searched for people who scavenge in potato fields, apple orchards and vineyards, as well as in urban markets and roadside rubbish heaps. Some are motivated by desperate need, others by horror at wastefulness and others by an almost mystical desire to make works of art out of things - castoff dolls, old refrigerators, windscreen wipers - that have been thrown away without a second thought.

Offering touching and inspiring thoughts about time, mortality and identity, Varda is a constant, funny presence in the film. She provides piquant voice-over narration and allows herself visual and verbal digressions on the state of her aging hands (she was 71 at the time of filming), the water damage on her ceiling at home and her lens cap accidentally dancing around in front of the camera.

"In its frames, we see [Varda's] empathy, skill, curiosity, wit, poetry and passion for life: everything she has gleaned from a lifetime of love and movies." - Michael Wilmington, The Chicago Tribune

Thursday morning screenings include a free cuppa with your ticket!

This film is F-Rated. The F-Rating is applied to all films which are directed by women and/or written by women. Find out more about F-Rating.

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