Être et avoir

Nicolas Philibert, France, 2002

Comment

Être et Avoir is a documentary which follows the life of a class in a small village school over the course of a school year. During the film’s 1 and half hours we witness the passage of the seasons, the transformations they impose on the land, the changing seasonal attire of the people of the village, the light, and the changes in village life itself.

To show the start of the summer the director, Nicholas Philibert, chose to leave the school behind and film a picnic outdoors. Sitting under the shade of a tree, which shelters them from the sun, the children eat their lunch. Their clothing is short and light, the boys, for the most part wear either a cap or a summer hat. To enable them to film the fields of wheat, where the crop grows so high it hides the children, he films the children searching for little Alizée.