Agnès Varda, director of the amazing documentary Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (The Gleaners and I), has a new film out—what appears to be a fantastical, memoir-documentary about her life as a New Wave pioneer, wife and lover of Jacques Demy and all-around badass. Here’s the trailor.
And here’s A.O. Scott’s piece on the project and its creator. In it, he calls Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse “a personal and philosophical inquiry into the practice of gathering what has been discarded or passed over.” And it is. Because Varda made it. In France. If anyone else had tackled the project, it would have been a movie about freegans and politics and all that is wonky and dull and without the fun of a wacky French/Belgian woman inserting herself into the action as a very present narrator. In short, it would have been no fun at all and noone would remember that in France, they have a crazy law that requires farmers to open their farms up to the public after harvest to collect leftover food. I can’t wait to see what the rest of her life/career was like.
Anyway, since this post is only tangentially trash-related, I’m throwing in this link from a few months back on urban gleaning. Check it out now if you missed it then.

Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot about this guy David de Rothschild and his forthcoming voyage to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch on his forthcoming plastic bottle vessel, the Plastiki.

David de Rothschild
The boat and journey are loosely modeled on the adventures of Thor Heyderdahl, that salty Norweigian who sailed great oceanic distances on a flimsy-looking balsawood raft in the style of a Peruvian pae-pae.
Press coverage of this venture has been a joy to read. De Rothschild, in case you didn’t know, is an heir. In addition to personal wealth, he also has a posh British accent, rugged facial hair and his own eco TV show on the Sundance Channel.
According to Treehugger: “De Rothschild is a fascinating eco-warrior. He is gorgeous, rich and extremely eligible. “
GOOD published this illuminating Q&A along with a sexy photo of de Rothschild sprawled in a bed of plastic. The New York Times did a thing. Even The New Yorker ran a profile.
But my favorite piece so far and by far—judged on both tone and informational content—is this SF Weekly blog post. Yay snark. Enjoy.
Oh, and not surprisingly, this guy has a sizable YouTube pressence.

everydaytrash.com's Notes
Holy trash in BrooklynJul 5, 2009
The Beaches of AgnèsJul 1, 2009
PlastikiJun 27, 2009
Generation cassetteJun 24, 2009
Trash for TeachingJun 24, 2009
The After Closing PartyJun 24, 2009
Trash watersJun 23, 2009
OK to dump US mining trash in lakesJun 23, 2009
York dustbinJun 23, 2009
Trash MenagerieJun 20, 2009



















