The Portland EcoFilm Festival’s Global Ecological Cinema Podcast

Episode One: THE GLEANERS AND I

Featured Guest: Kiva Reardon

Release Date: March 12, 2026

English Transcript:

ROZZELL MEDINA: Welcome to the Portland Eco Film Festival's Global Ecological Cinema Podcast, where we share in-depth conversations about fascinating intersections of ecology, cinema, and filmmaking. By embracing the root definition of ecology, we explore what it means for humanity to have, hold, and transmit knowledge of planet Earth as our shared home through the power of cinema from around the living world.

For this, our very first episode, we focus on Agnès Varda's beloved documentary, THE GLEANERS AND I.

Released in the year 2000, this warm, meandering masterpiece, which opened our 2026 festival, explores the act of gleaning, not only as collecting food that would otherwise go to waste, but as a multifaceted means of survival, expression, ecological responsibility, and belonging.

Varda passed away in 2019, leaving behind a legendary body of work spanning more than 50 years, including several films that explore ecological and place-based themes. I wanted to discuss Agnés Varda with Kiva Reardon. Kiva is a producer, writer, and film curator who has dedicated countless hours to appreciating, studying, and writing about Varda. She even spent time with Agnés Varda and her daughter, Rosalie, and named her celebrated journal of film and feminism after the eponymous character of Varda's breakthrough 1962 feature, CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7. Knowing that THE GLEANERS AND I is one of her favorite films, I asked my dear friend and the founder of the Portland EcoFilm Festival, Dawn Smallman, to join our conversation. First, we wanted to hear from Kiva what it was like to spend time with Agnés Varda.

KIVA REARDON: The first time was 2016, and my boss at the time, Cameron Bailey, he knew of me because of Cléo Journal and how much I liked her. I remember him saying, “Look, Agnes Varda is going to come into town. She'll be here for three days. We'll clear your schedule. Your job is to just be with her and take her and Rosalie around and, you know, be her fixer, make sure that her festival experience is great.”

I was like, “Okay! Incredible!” And it really was incredible. You hear, like, don't meet your heroes. And instead, it was really these three days of her asking so many questions and taking in and observing the world in a way that I think really imprinted on me the idea of curiosity being what keeps you from becoming rigid and becoming fixed in expectations and ways of seeing the world. Which I think when we talk about people being older in kind of pejorative ways, it's because we're talking about something like this. Like, “I've seen enough, I know what it is and it's going to be this.” And she was the opposite of that. We would just be walking around Toronto and she'd ask a question about something.

Or there was a reception for her at the Varda Lounge, and she just wanted to sit and talk to young filmmakers, and was so genuinely curious about what they were doing and what they were interested in. And I guess that spirit, that ethos, that sense of curiosity was what really stuck with me. And then the second time, I was living in Paris at the time, and I reached out and it was, you know, around FACES PLACE, and she was very busy and I said, “You know, if she would have time, could I possibly come interview her?”

And they said yes, you have 20 minutes or whatever the kind of standard junket time is. And so I got to go to her atelier and I ended up spending over an hour with her because she just was like, “No, this is great. We're talking about cinema.” And I remember that was the end of the interview, that she turned to Rosalie and said like, “This was so wonderful. We just spent our time talking about cinema.” And I couldn't believe that I got to be sitting in her atelier with her, surrounded by all her objects that pointed to different ephemera and it was quite surreal and I'm amazed that I kept it together.

ROZZELL MEDINA: That sounds dreamy, Kiva. You and your collaborators at Cléo Journal titled a 2018 Varda retrospective at the Toronto International Film Festival, Radical Empathy. I'd love to hear more about what that phrase means to you and how it relates to Agnès Varda.

KIVA REARDON: That idea of radical empathy, I think…the word radical means from the root. And to me, it's a word that is very political. And empathy, I don't think, is always placed in that kind of context, but is such a political thing and is integral to so much of all of our lives. Putting the two together, I think, got to the core of so much of her work.

Like she made very engaged works around the right to abortion or women's rights or the Black Panther documentary. I remember seeing that for the first time and being like, my gosh, who is this woman? Where they were just like, “Yeah, sure, come through, white woman, and you can have as much access as you want to us.” Like the ability to be able to enter spaces and capture them that way, I think came from her empathy and curiosity. So to answer the first part of the question, “Why that title?”

I think it encapsulated the politics, but also the warmth and joy in so much of her films.

ROZZELL MEDINA: And how does that phrase, radical empathy relate to THE GLEANERS AND I in particular?

KIVA REARDON: The only way that you could enter these spaces and talk to these people is if you come with an openness that I think is part of empathy. Truly this film would not exist without her doing that. Because she just had been watching people on the streets of Paris glean after the markets had closed and just started wondering, “Who are they? Where does this come from, and why are they doing it? And what's the broader tradition of doing this?”

And that then leads to all the research in the film around the fine arts and the paintings. And it just keeps coming back to these people who she approaches with this openness and empathy and curiosity. And they then respond to that, which is why the film is so remarkable.

ROZZELL MEDINA: I'm a little obsessed with the word radical and with that, the roots of words. Thinking of this phrase, radical empathy inspired me to learn the etymology of the word empathy, which is em and pathos, meaning in feeling. It's funny, because I think about the phrase in our feelings and how Varda is not afraid to be in her feelings when she's making a film. For me, that's one of the things that makes her work really beautiful. She's suddenly contemplating her hand, the sheep crossing the road, this person digging through a pile of discarded food, and there's something very human about that.

Dawn, I think you were attracted to this idea of radical empathy, and I'm curious if you have any thoughts about it related to ecology.

DAWN SMALLMAN: I think it's that play that she always has between connecting herself to other things. When I think of empathy, when I think of ecology, I think of connections, right? Like that's the core of all those things to me. And I really love–in all of her work, but particularly in this film–that she's moving back and forth between looking at her hand and contemplating her own aging.

Then she… you know, she lets it drift off of her own hand. And I love that she's shooting this film herself too, right? And that goes onto Rembrandt's portrait. And then she says, “Everything is a self-portrait, basically.” And I think that when she's looking at the other people in the film, she's looking at herself as well. And I think that empathy and caring for yourself and caring for others is just so entwined in every aspect of this film. And it's one of the things that I think permeates all of the films I've ever seen of hers. It’s part of why I love her and part of why I think she's, to me, the greatest of filmmakers.

What are a few moments in THE GLEANERS AND I that stick with you that really show her curiosity and empathy?

KIVA REARDON: I think I really gravitated to upon this–I don't even know how many times I've watched it, but upon this rewatch–was this question of age and of turning the camera on yourself and a way of doing that that's playful and not morose, even though she's like, “I'm looking at my hands. I know the end's coming. Look at my roots. We're going to expire.” But that not being limiting, but rather just a fact and also a way of seeing the world, of knowing like if time is finite, what do I do with it?

And the potatoes! I kind of forgot about how beautiful that impulse is in this film to find what is deemed as garbage and repurpose it, and reframe it, and love it. If I could read one quote from a book, because I was doing a little bit of research prep here–from Kelly Conway's book on Agnes Varda.

She says, “The film suggests that our culture is too quick to reject slightly bruised apples, misshapen potatoes, and even women who don't conform to certain norms. By foregrounding the wrinkling and aging yet still curious and capable Varda, the film implicitly invites us to look again at what we tend to reject and reconsider its value.” And I think that's why the potatoes took on a new meaning because it was also the first time that I was watching it through a lens of ecology.

ROZZELL MEDINA: You mentioned to me previously that while you were happy to talk with us, you don't consider yourself to be much of an expert in ecology. I am really curious what it was like for you to watch THE GLEANERS AND I through an ecological lens, knowing that we were going to have this conversation.

KIVA REARDON: It was like I was watching a whole other film. It was so beautiful, and I was so grateful that you had presented the film in that light. Because obviously that's what this film is about, but I think it's almost so obvious that it's about that, that I hadn't ever really considered what that truly means and how radical and ahead of its time it really was to be centering these questions of waste repurposing in the year 2000, and how she does it across everything in the film.

The idea of the digital camera, which I've thought a lot about and many people have written about, as well as this shift to digital from having worked on film her whole life, and what film waste is. The stock, the canisters, what ends up on the cutting room floor. There's so much inherent waste in film, and there was something in her filming on digital that allowed her to really glean and pick up images. And there is no waste because she can kind of just shoot whatever she wants and see what comes from that. And it felt like this film captured a really global sense of an ecosystem on the micro scale of how Alain is picking up parsley at the end and not wanting that to be wasted. “How does that then extend into every aspect of our life?” felt like the question that was sort of brewing beneath everything in the film as well. So it was quite revelatory to watch it through that lens. And I truly was really grateful for that framing because it felt so fresh.

DAWN SMALLMAN: What sustenance do you think Varda was searching for for herself while she was making this film?

KIVA REARDON: I think the sustenance comes from others. And not in a vampire sense of sucking and taking, but in a real symbiotic–again, going back to this question of ecology–if we're all feeding from each other, and one person suddenly, or one chunk, one tranche of something is removed, the whole thing collapses. And the impulse in this film is quite literally to just go out on the street and film and meet, and listen, and observe. And I think the sustenance from that is quite reassuring–that the world keeps turning in spite of everything. And I think that's a real takeaway from this film too.

DAWN SMALLMAN: I read that for a while. I think it was while she was pregnant, a doctor forced her to stay at home. And so she made a film basically about her house and her neighbors, right? Like you cannot stop her level of curiosity, from large down to microscopic. It's inflatable and reducible to levels of infinity, I think, as a filmmaker. It's just, it's really one of the great things about her as a person, I think, even beyond as a filmmaker.

KIVA REARDON: And that's what I mean too about not being stuck or sure of something that might be inherently familiar. You pass things every single day, but what does it mean to suddenly stop and ask a question about it? And that gift…

Anyway, I think of my two-year-old, and everything is new. Like she's really never, she's never done any of this before. And that kind of curiosity, how do you keep that until your eighties or nineties? And Varda had that answer. And it was the ability to just pause, ask, and look. And if we all could do that, I do think the world would be a very different and better place.

ROZZELL MEDINA: It's fascinating to hear you have this exchange. With a lot of the filmmakers who I've talked with this year who are making these sometimes explicit and sometimes implicitly ecological films, curiosity is a constant theme–curiosity not just as a trait for a filmmaker but for somebody who's interested in living more ecologically and essentially doing their part to save the world.

Speaking of curiosity, when we do in-person Q &As at the festival, I like to ask our special guests if they have any questions for the audience. We're doing a version of that for the podcast as well. Kiva, will you please share a few questions for people to consider after they watch THE GLEANERS AND I?

KIVA REARDON: Who were you curious about? But more importantly, why? I think this question of why you're drawn to something can be quite illuminating in terms of what in that moment you're responding to and what that means you're bringing to the viewing, what that means that you're bringing as an audience member. So that was the first one. Yeah, who were you curious about and why?

The other one was around digital filmmaking and how much do we need to know about the materiality about how it was filmed? Does it matter? Why does it matter? What does it mean to point to how we are making things? And a bigger question in that too is this question of democratization of filming and who has access to film and cameras and equipment. And so those questions are just how films are concretely made and how that can be both limiting but also expansive.

And again, something we also touched on, but waste in filmmaking, waste in our industry as a whole. And this wasn't something I had thought about until, like I had said, you had asked me to watch it through this lens, but thinking about waste impact and footprint in creation and filmmaking, I think is a fun question to think about in this film in terms of herself as just sort of almost this one woman show, but then also this question of what images are considered wasteful or not and how she gleans and gathers and puts everything together as a tapestry, a recycled tapestry of ideas and images.

DAWN SMALLMAN: Just the list of your questions is like an endorsement of the complexity of this film in particular, isn't it?

KIVA REARDON: You could have a whole question on aging. When have you seen an elder on screen? How were they represented? Were they represented in a joyful way with agency or was it always through a sad lens of some kind of cognitive decline? What does that mean about how we view aging, how we view elders, who we view as essential in society? There, I just spiraled off a whole other essay.

ROZZELL MEDINA: Finally, will you please share your five favorite ecological films as defined by you and why you love them?

KIVA REARDON: This was so fun. Thank you so much for making me do this. I think in some way this question of what is ecological, I think in some way intimidated me or whatever the bias was, I hadn't necessarily approached or thought about things through this lens until more recently. And what I realized when I finally did put the film list together was to me, an ecological film was one that explored how humans are not separate and how we're fully woven into the world and are part of cause and effect. Okay, I'll get into my list.

So the first thing that actually came to mind was WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE, this Spike Lee documentary about Hurricane Katrina, which I had gone back into last year, because it was the 20th anniversary. And this was really, I remember it so clearly and I think it was one of those formative human-made catastrophes that really shaped how I ended up seeing the world through a very political lens, but I hadn't really teased out the environmental or the ecological impact of that. And I think in the last few years, we've started to see a lot of things that are disappearing underwater. So I thought of that film because I had also just watched a short that was at Sundance called SOME KIND OF REFUGE, which is also about another area in New Orleans that is starting to go underwater. And I just thought these were two nice pieces that foregrounded community and people and how they were still living on a land that was disappearing.

And then I thought of Princess Mononoke, which is something that I think is both for younger adults and older adults as well, that is through a science fiction or fantasy and animation lens, very concretely talking about, what happens when things burn and how, and what does it mean to save them?

Okay, this one's kind of silly, but I just was being honest, and I put it on because I did rewatch all of the LORD OF THE RINGS over Christmas. And I was like, THE TWO TOWERS and the Ents? That is some ecological shit right there! And if the trees would rise up, and if we listen to them, they would know a whole lot. And I do believe they would be on our side.

I should have looked up where you can actually watch this film, FORAGERS, by Jumana Manna. And I think it came out in 2022. So it's more recent. She's a Palestinian filmmaker, and made this hybrid documentary about Palestinians harvesting za'atar and herbs from the land and how laws are now blocking them from doing that. And she very much frames this and talks about it as an ecological film, but one that is also living through contemporary colonialism. And again, going back to THE GLEANERS AND I, that ridiculous moment of a judge in the field saying, “No, you actually can't touch this”. That's very much what the documentary is exploring too.

And then I kind of just wanted to say anything by Alanis Obamsawin, the Indigenous filmmaker from Canada, because so much of her work, I think, was a way into understanding Indigeneity, ecology, and the land that I wasn't really taught in school. But when I started discovering her work, it's not even that every single film is inherently about, you know, what happens downstream, or so many questions of basically the health of the land and who lives on it, but it's kind of implicit in a lot of it. And I went back and rewatched INCIDENT AT RESTIGOUCHE, I think is how you say it. But it was about farming salmon and laws around who can and who can't fish.

And that actually was a film that was very influential on another filmmaker, Jeff Barnaby, who had away a few years ago. And this mid-length film by Alanis Obamsawin was very important to him when he made his film, BLOOD QUANTUM. And these allegorical–it's a zombie film–the allegorical ideas of the land and infection and who belongs and who can sustain suddenly was making me again think of ecology. That was more than five, I'm so sorry.

ROZZELL MEDINA: I love it. You aced the assignment. And maybe it is a little silly, but I think Treebeard shouting, “Break the dam! Release the river!” might also be one of my favorite ecological moments on film.

KIVA REARDON: I hadn't rewatched all of LORD OF THE RINGS for a long time. And this call to arms was so moving, of tearing down the mines that Sauron's building, and flooding, it and bringing water and life back in, I think I cried.

ROZZELL MEDINA: I thought I might cry when my conversation with Kiva Reardon and Dawn Smallman came to an end, but in the spirit of Agnés Varda, I turned instead to someone who could bring me closer to the world of gleaning in the year 2026.

LIZZ MARKS: My name is Lizz. I grew up in Portland, and I grew up with a mom who was a gardener and a cook, someone who taught me a lot about the value of good food and the joy of good food as well. I would definitely say that I am a gleaner. I think part of growing up in a household that valued gardening and valued cooking, that was something that was really instilled in me. You know, how to reuse things, how to make your own stock from scraps and being able to do that kind of thing. My mom was also an artist, so reuse and scrap in that sense was definitely a big value that was instilled in me. Yeah, I think there's a lot of life that can be left in things that often get discarded or seen as kind of finished. And I think that is really beautiful and exciting.

ROZZELL MEDINA: It sounds like gleaning early on for you was a familial thing. Then you actually leaned into gleaning as a profession. How did that take shape?

LIZZ MARKS: I studied anthropology and environmental policy originally, and I got really interested in community gardening and fruit tree gleaning. And then when I ended up back in Portland, I started working for a local nonprofit called Urban Gleaners, which does essentially a modern industrial scale version of gleaning where we work with grocery stores, restaurants, and anywhere that has food service really that has surplus. And we will pick it up and redistribute it to folks that are food insecure.

ROZZELL MEDINA: Amazing. In THE GLEANERS AND I, Agnès Varda talks about how gleaning has become less of a communal activity and more of an individual activity. In your work, do you return some of that communal experience to the act of gleaning?

LIZZ MARKS: It's actually something we talk about a lot at Urban Gleaners. So for example, I run one of our weekly free food markets, and we have a ton of regulars. It's typically a hundred or so folks that come out each week to just a public park to get free groceries. And it absolutely has become a really meaningful community space. I have watched a lot of people form friendships. I know the names of folks' kids and their dogs. And it really is a super meaningful place of connection. And that is, I think, a really important thing that gets undervalued and under-talked-about often within the realm of food systems–the meaningfulness of having shared community spaces and spaces together. So it absolutely functions that way in our experience.

ROZZELL MEDINA: When you watched THE GLEANERS AND I, what were some of your takeaways in terms of the difference between the gleaners of Agnès Varda's film nearly 30 years ago in France and gleaning in Portland, Oregon in 2026?

LIZZ MARKS: One of the biggest things that stands out to me about THE GLEANERS AND I is the degree to which it focuses on agriculture and gleaning on farms as one of the main modes of gleaning. But watching it from the context of now–of Portland in 2026–I think gleaning looks a lot different. Thinking about the way our food system works now compared to how it worked historically. And even just the United States compared to France, we're a much vaster country, whereas France, inherently smaller and a little bit more concentrated, even the cities are a little bit more close to farmland.

But even just in the past, you know, 25, 26 years since the film was made, our food system is hugely industrialized. So that kind of gleaning can be pretty inaccessible today. If you think about where people get their food from, it's mostly the grocery store or restaurants, corner stores, that sort of thing. So I think that's the main thing that stands out to me when I watch the film.

ROZZELL MEDINA: Speaking of making gleaning accessible, I imagine that some people who have watched THE GLEANERS AND I might be interested in putting at least a toe in the door of the gleaning world. I'm curious if there are opportunities for people to get involved in and support the work of Urban Gleaners.

LIZZ MARKS: There are lots of ways to get involved, and we're happy to have anyone who wants to get involved in whatever capacity works well for them. We have a number of different volunteer opportunities. I imagine someone who's maybe just watched THE GLEANERS AND I might be especially excited about the volunteer opportunities we have in the summer and fall during the growing season. We work with a lot of local farms, and we'll take volunteers out to harvest excess produce that they have on the farm, and do pretty much essentially what you would see in the film. Anyone who has means, we're always happy to have financial donors, and that's a super important avenue for us. And then beyond that, anyone who wants to just learn more, follow us on Instagram, stay up to date on what we're doing, and just sing our praises out in the community. That's also a really meaningful way to support the organization and our work.

ROZZELL MEDINA: Lizz Marks, thanks for being here and for all the good you do in the world.

LIZZ MARKS: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

ROZZELL MEDINA: If you haven't seen THE GLEANERS AND I by Agnès Varda, I hope you'll find the opportunity. If you have seen it, I hope you'll talk about it with your friends, family, and strangers. Several of the films that Kiva Reardon mentioned on this episode, including KANEHSATAKE by Alanis Obomsawin, are available to rent at the world's best video store, Movie Madness, in Portland, Oregon.

You can learn more about Kiva Reardon at kivareardon.com. That's Kiva with an “I.”

The 2026 Portland Eco Film Festival is happening all over Portland and across the Pacific Northwest from March through June. We are sponsored by Crag Law Center and Solve. Our opening night screening of The Gleaners and I was sponsored by Lift Urban Portland, the Coalition to Advance Food Equity, and Urban Gleaners.

We are a signature program of the Hollywood Theater, Portland, Oregon's premier modern historic movie palace. Learn more at portlandecofilmfest.org and hollywoodtheatre.org.

Our theme music is from the song Earth Worship by the amazing band Rubble Bucket.

Our Global Ecological Cinema podcast is hosted, edited, and produced by myself, Rozzell Medina. We'll be back every week through June with new episodes featuring conversations with film participants, cultural luminaries like Kiva, and filmmakers whose films are gracing our screens this year. Thanks for listening, and for all the good you do in the world.