디지털 카메라를 든 여자

A Woman with a Digital Camera: from the Glancer to the Gleaner

This article tries to find a theoretical link between the essay film and women’s cinema by examining images of Agnes Varda's 2000 film <The Gleaners and I>. Adorno’s argument about the form of essay as the critical reason provides an important insight into the discourse of essay film regarding the film’s non-linear process of accumulating experiences. Located between documentaries and experimental films, the essay film asks what we see and learn through exploration and rediscovery of filmic images rather than constructing a logic to produce meanings and knowledge. In <The Gleaners and I> Varda goes on a journey of an essay that “picks up” images, especially with a digital camera in one of her hands. Along with her camera, we look at the various forms of mediated images that have defined our ways of looking, to rediscover images that have been overlooked in the existing value system. This paper analyzes Varda's digital camera as a tool that connects and moves with the seeing body within the world, not separate vis-a-vis the subject of the camera. In this sense, Varda can be said to perform the female film essayist as a dual role.