EDITH KURZWEIL
New York
Film
Festival of
2000
A
LTHOUGH
I
ATTENDED
only about half of the films chosen for the
38th New York film Festival, in October
2000,
I was struck by
the fact that in these most of the protagonists in the lands of
plenty-America, hance, Sweden, japan-were the down-and-outs, the
lost sheep, the losers. They tended to be surrounded by heaps of dis–
carded plastic, of garish and multicolored trash-whether pushed in
front of garbage trucks to swamp wide, central streets and steep, outly–
ing ravines, or to underline the injustices discussed in our daily press and
shown on our television screens. Inevitably, the pristine, wide landscapes
of China and japan, for instance, depicted the beauty of preindustrial
life, along with its hardships. The themes of these documentaries and
films varied from merely suggestive sexual ones to the most ruthless
killings-many among them somewhat short of genuine suspense. This
is not to say that the viewers didn't feel for the fates of the characters.
Still, I couldn't but wonder whether their directors were emulating, or
playing to, cultural trends, cou ldn 't find stories that in one way or
another hadn't been filmed before, or simply expected to show it as it is.
Much of the acting was superb, the photographers' techniques of mov–
ing in and around objects, and of achiev ing novel pictorial effects, and
moods, were often stunning as we ll as surprising.
One of the surprises was the French documentary,
The Gleaners and
I,
that inspired Agnes Varda to compare the picture of women glean–
ers-who pick up what kernels the harvesters have left behind-in an
1867 painting by jean-Fran<;ois Millet that hangs in the Musee d'Orsay
in Paris-to contemporary gleaners. Varda pursued them during all of
I999,
from potato fields, vineyards, and app le orchards,
to
trash depos–
itories, market places, and cabbage fields, and noted the ways in which
formerly proud harvesters have descended
to
the lowest rungs of soci–
ety. She talked to farmers who explained why and how the French
bureaucracy now gives licenses to those it a llows
to
gathe r unharvested
fruit. She interrogated a lawyer who read
to
her from the relevant code
book; and a former truck driver in a shabby trailer, as well as working
people for whom gleaning has become a way of life. Whereas to begin
