Star French teacher loses pay claim for film PR

MONTPELLIER, France, March 31 (AFP) – A French primary school teacher who starred in a popular documentary, “Etre et Avoir” (“To Be and To Have”), lost an appeal Wednesday to be paid for his role in promoting the film.

A court in Montpellier, close to where teacher Georges Lopez now lives, threw out the claim, saying that answering questions by journalists and audience members “did not in itself constitute a professional activity”.

The verdict upheld a lower court’s ruling against Lopez, who had sued documentary maker Nicolas Philibert and his production company on the grounds that he believed he had been employed to make the public appearances even though no written contract existed.

The 2002 film won rave reviews in Europe for its intimate peek into Lopez’s classroom in a remote part of France and into the lives of his young pupils, and turned the teacher into a minor celebrity.

© AFP

                                         Subject: French news