The Gleaners and I with Carrie Rickey

With an introduction and book signing by Carrie Rickey, author of A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda 

Dir. Agnès Varda. 2000, 82 mins. DCP. In French with English subtitles. Named by the BBC as one of the 100 greatest films of the 21st century, The Gleaners and I is, like most Varda films, beyond categorization, simultaneously outward-facing and self-reflective. Varda herself referred to it as a “wandering-road documentary,” and she used the emerging format of portable digital cameras to achieve remarkable intimacy. Beginning with the famous Jean-François Millet painting of women gathering wheat left over from a harvest, she focuses her ever-seeking eye on gleaners: those who scour already reaped fields for the odd potato or turnip. Her investigation leads us from forgotten corners of the French countryside to off-hours at the green markets of Paris, following those who insist on finding a use for that which society has cast off, whether out of necessity or activism. Varda’s own ruminations on her life as a filmmaker (a gleaner of sorts) give her a connection to her subjects that creates a touching human portrait. 

Rickey on The Gleaners and I: “Varda’s signature film is about food insecurity in land of plenty, Old Testament directives about gleaning, 16th century French law protecting the practice, and agriculture in the age of mechanical harvesters, and most of all, those who look at what others throw away and find sustenance and beauty.” 

Preceded by

The So-Called Caryatids
Dir. Agnès Varda. 1984, 12 mins. Digital projection. In this 12-minute masterpiece, Varda gently satirizes gender inequality in 19th-century Beaux-Arts architecture. 

Tickets: $15 / $11 senior and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). There is a $1.50 transaction fee per ticket for all online purchases. The cost of admission may be applied toward a same-day purchase of a membership. 

Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission.