Hacker Cinema
To Be and to Have
Être et avoir
2002 · Film · documentary · 104 min
Directed by Nicolas Philibert
The documentary's title translates as "to be and to have", the two auxiliary verbs in the French language. It is about a primary school in the commune of Saint-Étienne-sur-Usson, Puy-de-Dôme, France, the population of which is just over 200. The school has one small class of mixed ages (from four to twelve years), with a dedicated teacher, Georges Lopez, who shows patience and respect for the children as we follow their story through a single school year.
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4 comments on Hacker News
I highly recommend the movie "Être et avoir", which doesn't necessarily touch this exact subject but is a wonderful look into the world of rural France as it existed 20 years ago.
About 2003 or 2004, there was a French documentary, "Etre et Avoir" about a teacher in a rural town in France. I liked it as
- giving a picture of a thoroughly dedicated, able teacher - showing the interest and frustration of teaching small children - showing a very different school system--there are relatively few places in the US where a classroom can have first graders and eighth graders.
Etre et Avoir, about a French elementary school teacher: http://www.amazon.com/Original-French-Version-English-Subtitles/dp/B000296E7W/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1377024757&sr=1-1&keywords=etre+et+avoir
> The non geek will [...] love the gloss that Unity brings to Ubuntu.
I don't know. It seems common sense that "non geeks" (hear, common people) like glossy things. After all, the Miss Universe thing has some success and is pure gloss. But I think it can also be an observation bias, or the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing.
For instance, we check what people like to watch on TV, but what the people are fed with on the TV is already the result of some presupposition over what they like.
Some counter example exist, showing that people do not always like preformatted content, or glossy interface. Two different cases come to mind:
In France, there was a movie called Etre et Avoir, about a teacher in a remote countryside village. No professional actors, no story, just some shots in a school. Who would have bet on it? Is it not obvious that spectators want action, glamour, movie stars? Well in this case it was not true: the movie has been widely successful.
Another case, closer to HN interest: Is not Wikipedia the most successful (rich) content website ever? Who could say without laughing that Wikipedia has a glossy interface?
So I think one need to avoid clichés and presuppositions about "non geeks". They may or may not like Unity. If they do, it could be because it looks "glossy", yes, maybe, but it could also be because it just works, or because it is cheap, or because it is fast, or for some other reason.