Homework

Dir. Abbas Kiarostami (1989) | Iran | Persian | 86 min | DVD

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To Be and To Have

Dir. Nicolas Philibert (2002) | France | French | 104 min | DCP

Programmed by Naomi

A child explains why their homework is unfinished. Another waits patiently, sounding out words one syllable at a time. In Kiarostami’s Homework (Mašq-e šab), students reveal the practiced choreography of being “good”: sitting still, speaking properly, knowing when silence is safer than honesty.

Philibert’s To Be and to Have (Être et avoir) observes the daily routine of a rural primary school classroom: recitation, careful listening, small hands learning how to write, count, and repeat.

Each title frames a structure of learning: Homework, the task carried between school and home; Être et avoir, “to be” and “to have,” the two French auxiliary verbs through which action, memory, relation, and selfhood are articulated. 

What both films consider is how children learn to inhabit the world they are given, following the rituals of schooling as responsibility, social life, and ways of knowing take shape beyond the classroom.

SHOWTIMES

Friday, May 22
6 pm - Homework
8:30 pm - To Be and To Have

Saturday, May 23
6 pm - Homework
8:30 pm - To Be and To Have

Sunday, May 24
3 pm - Homework
5:30 pm - To Be and To Have