In Être et avoir (2002), French filmmaker Nicolas Philibert follows a full school year in a one-room classroom in rural Auvergne. Filmed over the course of ten weeks, the film focuses on the pedagogical labour of Georges Lopez, a teacher on the cusp of retirement, as he guides a group of children aged four to twelve through the rhythms of learning and growing up.
Philibert visited over a hundred schools before choosing the class in the small village of Saint-Étienne-sur-Usson that would become the stage of the film. With a crew of four, he spent weeks filming and gaining the trust of Lopez and the children under his care. “My camera wasn’t a surveillance camera! On the contrary, we had to be there. At their side. Present in what they were doing,” Philibert writes in a short text on his website. The camera does not interrogate but accompanies, observing the most mundane interactions with quiet attention, allowing gestures to speak. His cinema is rooted in a deep concern for the filmed subject.
In many ways, Être et avoir is a film of contrasts. The passing of the seasons structures the film and serves to establish the classroom as a place of refuge, playing on the opposition between interior and exterior, between warmth and cold. “Often, after class, we would set off along local paths to film landscapes,” Philibert recalled. The wide-open spaces, the wind-swept trees, and the lonely countryside lend the film an almost fairytale-like quality.
Critics hailed Être et avoir for restoring dignity to the teaching profession at a time when it was increasingly undervalued. It won the Louis-Delluc Prize (2002) and a César for Best Editing (2003), and drew over 1.5 million French viewers, an unprecedented success for a documentary in France.
This screening is part of De Cinema’s BACK 2 School programme.
Film Pages
