| Gleaners are everywhere sifting through harvested fields and looking through dumpsters to name two gleaning sites. But I had not thought about them until I watched a Netflix video. Agnes Varda's "The Gleaners and I". It was filmed in 2000 when she was 72 years old. She is well known in France as a pioneer in the New Wave films. She is a feminist and activist. The theme of the "The Gleaners and I" was our society is wasteful of food, manufactured products and without words she communicated that she felt she was a discarded senior. In Oregon the art of gleaning is an art in the best of health.  |
| Don gleaning firewood from dying trees about 8 years ago |
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| About 19 years ago Don chopping wood gleaned from neighbor's diseased trees. |
Varda believes all roles in making a film should work together. Cinematographer, screenwriter, director, etc. working simultaneously to create a more cohesive film, and all elements of the film should contribute to its message. at first I was puzzled by what appeared to me as disconnected.She combined pictures of her old hands and gray hair with interviews of people from all backgrounds eating and collecting agricultural waste and urban garbage. It was a real stretch for me to associate Verda with societies discards. She intended to say society makes older people discards and that she proves how wrong society is?
But what was most interesting to me was the creative process of some of the gleaners who were performing or visual artists or lived creatively.
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| It is fun picking up glass and other micro-trash on our neighborhood roadways and then make an assemblage. |
