12 - Portraiture and Realism

Portraiture and Realism

By : Samuel, Michael, and Nikkesha

Intro/Synopsis:

            Agnès Varda is a French film director who makes documentaries with a distinct experimental style that focuses mainly on social commentary, personal portraits and documentary realism. Her film Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (translated as The Gleaners and I) was made in several regions of France; in Beauce, Jura, Provence, Pyreneese and finally, in the suburbs of Paris, then it was released in the year 2000. The film was celebrated as the ‘best French film of the year 2000’ by the French Union of Film Critics. It features a variety of forms of gleaning 

Gleaning is the act of collecting or salvaging leftover crops, scraps and food after they have been discarded from their economic origins. In the film, Varda reveals that she herself is a gleaner; not necessarily like the people she interviews, but in her own, creative way. In an interview about the movie, she identifies that her brand of gleaning happens when: 

"…you pick ideas, you pick images, you pick emotions from other people, and then you make it into a film."

The film is also unique in that it makes great use of the versatile, free form of Varda’s style, and the picture it paints of the beauty that can be found in simple, or old and used things as opposed to the human’s insatiable desire for the newest and the finest of products. The film is approximately 80 minutes long and gives a personal and political connection to gleaning and presents it as an old tradition and again in a more modern style of gleaning, often interpreted as “garbage-picking”.

       The act of gleaning can be traced as far back as the days when harvests first became introduced as both economical and social means of support. Gleaners would follow closely behind the harvesters, and after the harvest had finished they would pick up everything the harvesters had missed. It was a perfect system because the owners of the land got all the food they needed and they would not have to pay anyone to clear the grounds at the end of the season. In addition to that, the gleaners got enough food for themselves at no cost.

This film follows many gleaners throughout France as they make their living hunting for food, necessary objects and personal connection. We see how much gleaning has changed and been modernized over the years. It is not solely an act performed for food during the harvest; it is now performed all year round; on the streets, in markets, and even through the garbage. Some of the more prominent people that Agnès Varda interviewed included Alain, an urban gleaner with a Master’s degree who gleans in the streets all day long and returns to a hostel where he voluntarily teaches French to immigrants for free. Another was the chef, who gleans his own herbs and produces no waste as all the leftovers in his restaurant are used for another meal as a soup or a sauce.

 
      

We have discussed much on the subject of the personal portraits people carry, and how we represent ourselves in this world and in this film, we see how these people believe in their ways of life because of the link Agnès Varda creates between herself and the interviewed. She lets them do the talking instead of using them for her film. We see the true side of their beliefs and feelings and how significant their traditions are to them personally, and culturally.

Supplementary:


To supplement the themes found in The Gleaners and I, we may take a look at another great Documentary film, The Silverlake Life.

This documentary is the winner of the Grand Jury Prize and the Freedom of Expression Award at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, and was released in 1993 by Peter Friedman. After the death of his two friends, Tom Joslin and Mark Massi who were lovers, Friedman inherited forty hours of video that documented the couple’s struggle with AIDS. The Silverlake Life makes connections to The Gleaners and I in regards to the subject of personal portraiture, and the way different people interpret the world and its inhabitants in certain situations.

During the era of the 80’s, AIDS became one of the world’s most prominent sources of discrimination and ignorance towards the homosexual community. The epidemic raged around the globe, bringing devastation to millions of people and isolating them from the rest of the population, marking them not as individuals enduring a terrible crisis, but as individuals to be feared and hated.

Simple tasks became excruciatingly painful and difficult to perform for these two men and Joslin even refers to these chores as “brave efforts of physical dynamism”. We follow the story of these two men through the last few months of their lives and it is dreadful to see the toll their illness takes on them, and it is impossible to contemplate discrimination in any form against them simply because of it. 


       As people, Mark and Tom are somewhat complex. Their personalities have been ripped apart by the social media and all of the discrimination the public throws towards homosexual people and people who have contracted AIDS. The film shines a light on the way ‘society’ has been converted into a very impersonal, generalized concept; viewing individuals not uniquely, but as mindless cattle all following the same routine. It allows people make negative judgements one another far too easily as we see in the film, with the public media marking all homosexuals as inferior, infected people but Mark and Tom prove this theory wrong in so many ways and we can all learn much from their heart-wrenching story.

Reflection:
     

Les glaneurs et la glaneuse  and The Silverlake Life offer many lessons that can be learned in differing ways. Agnès Varda was a bit of a gleaner herself, “la glaneuse”, as she was gleaning all the experiences and stories of the people she interviewed. It was made quite obvious that these people were not uncivilized, unclean people who survive on trash, but that in many cases they are simply people leading a life they believe to be right, for example; the man in rubber boots who had a job and a home but chose to eat only out of the trash, because he couldn't believe the amount we as a society waste. People that glean can feel pushed away from society, from an outsider’s perspective it seems that they pick up dirty thrash, therefore picking up sickness. Gleaners can be pushed away and humiliated, we can associate this with the feeling the homosexuals affected by AIDS. These two groups; the gleaners and the homosexuals are often treated as repugnant beings. This taught us that if we can stop living our lives by following the social norm, we can in fact grow and prosper both economically and physically. 
             

 Another thing we found from this film was that people rarely own up to the portraits we make of them from what we see. Countless people Agnès Varda interviewed seemed at first glance like poor, homeless, dirty salvagers but as soon as she approached them we saw it was not so. We saw priests, lawyers, working class families and even a man with a Master’s degree. We saw this same theme again in the Silverlake Life, when we consider the injustices endured by people suffering from the AIDS epidemic. Many people would see them treated as second-class citizens, unworthy of being saved from their struggles with the virus, but in reality, they are people, everyday people who lead everyday lives who have jobs, families and loved ones just like anyone else. Society doesn't take the time to really think about the others. People are often misjudged because of their appearance, culture, ethnicity and sexual orientation. In these two movies society pushes away the gay and the gleaners because they act and live they way they feel is best. "Silverlake Life" and "Les glaneurs et la glaneuse" send out the messages that these two groups of people have been crying out.

We ourselves can only make our personal portraits, and this film helped us to understand that and open our eyes. If we gave each other a chance in this world instead of following baseless prejudice, maybe we would live in a more compassionate society. If people can break from its conditioning of what is seen today as socially acceptable, perhaps more would like to see and be apart of this change.

By : Samuel Pelland-Sauve, Michael Wolvin, Nikkesha Plata