Since her debut movie La Pointe Courte (The Short Point) in 1954, Agnès Varda has been a regular at the festival with a diverse selection of shorts and features. But although she began making films in tandem with the burgeoning New Wave movement, the Belgian-born, Sorbonne-educated Varda has been overlooked as a pioneer within the French film industry.

Straddling many styles ­ even pre-empting the current vogue for musicals with 1993's Les Demoiselles De Rochefort ­ Varda's commitment and political values are never diluted, even in such personal films as Jacquot De Nantes, a tribute to her film-maker husband Jacques Demy, who died in 1990.

Les Glaneurs Et La Glaneuse shows a return to her New Wave-era roots, a travelogue of sorts that sees Varda herself take to the streets of France. Along the way she meets the gleaners of the title ­ men or women who gather and recycle, like latter-day treasure hunters.

Out of necessity, chance or choice, these gleaners find uses for the things society throws out, and Varda draws parallels and contrasts with the gleaners of history ­ the peasant women who gathered the wheat which was left behind after the harvest. But in her travels, Varda also stops to wonder whether the scenes she shoots and gathers with her camera make her a gleaner of sorts, too ­ a very modest reflection for a woman with some 30 intriguing and original films to her credit.

Steve Grayson