Feeling Guilty About Food at the Aero

Agnes Varda, a pioneer of the French New Wave movement, made a documentary about gleaning from cast-offs in France and explores the people surrounding the issue. The Gleaners and I is beautifully put together and mixes interviews, personal experience, ideas on aging and death into a wonderful tapestry. You might think the kids dumpster diving behind Trader Joe's are fascinating, or obnoxious, or worse, but these people have so much need and integrity that it's hard to look away as they pick through heaps of potatoes and fields of wheat. And Varda is just so delightfully weird!

The Aero Theatre is screening Varda's portrait of life in world where there exists both excess and deprivation. Jeremy Seifert's
45 min. exploration into gleaning, American-style, in Dive! beforehand.

Following the film, our guests/panelists [Timothy Vatterott (DIVE! producer and composer), Rick Nahmias (founder and executive director of Food Forward, and Felicia Friesema (an L.A. County Master Food Preserver and a contributor to L.A. Weekly] will elaborate on several of the issues raised in the films to present a local perspective. Q&A moderated by Lisa Lucas Talbot, co-leader of Slow Food Los Angeles and Slow Food USA regional governor for Southern California. - Aero Theatre

Do your guilty middle-class conscience a favor and check these out Wednesday, July, 13 at the Aero Theatre (1328 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90403). The screening starts at 7:30 PM and general admission is $11. Find out about memberships on the American Cinematheque website.