Art & Politics Film Series: The Gleaners and I
Clark Art Institute 225 South St., Williamstown, Massachusetts 01267
This award-winning film by Agnès Varda (1928–2019) takes those on the margins, who subsist or even thrive on leftovers, as its subjects. Inspired by Jean-François Millet’s 1857 painting The Gleaners, which depicts peasant women gathering leftover wheat after a harvest, Varda scours town and country in her native France to find modern-day exemplars of the practice, telling their stories and reveling with them in their finds. Her idiosyncratic, personal narration and hand-held camera technique make this engrossing film by turns comical, critical, and deeply affecting.
The Art & Politics Film Series is organized by Robert Wiesenberger, the Clark’s associate curator of contemporary projects, and Horace Ballard, curator of American art at the Williams College Museum of Art. Each film begins with a brief introduction and is followed by light refreshments and conversation in the Manton Reading Room.
Free.
