Ãtre et Avoir
p. 
We went to see a film called “Ãtre et Avoir”:http://chipsquaw.free.fr/etreetavoir/index2uk.html last night. Directed (and filmed, I think) by Nicolas Philibert, it’s a fly-on-the-wall documentary following half a year in the life of school teacher Georges Lopez. He looks after a dozen or so children—ranging from 3 to 11 years old—in a single class as the sole teacher (known as classe unique in France, where it is apparently quite common in rural areas). The film was refreshingly different from the average ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentary for three reasons:
Even though it was a very intimate portrait of both the children and the teacher, it never felt voyeuristic.
It didn’t appear to have any kind of agenda or message—the events were presented very simply and the film maker was an observer, rather than a commentator.
The director really took his time with the shots. Not for him the currently popular nausea-inducing camera work and jumpy edits; every shot was unhurried and allowed you to just watch, in much more detail than you otherwise might. There was one long cut of fir trees being buffeted in a bitter blizzard which went on for minutes on end, which made me realise that I haven’t really looked at something like that in a long time, and that it was stunningly beautiful.
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