Video essays exist in a no man’s land between film practice and theory. They use an artistic language for academic reflections. That arguably makes them the ideal format to bridge the divide between praxis and analysis.

French filmmaker Robert Bresson tried to bridge that gap in his own way. His thirteen terse feature films gained him renown for their almost ascetic style and uncompromising rigor. But Bresson also put pen to paper and theorized about his craft in very succinct aphorisms. (Their brevity is a nice fit for the boiled down narrative style of his films).

His Notes sur le cinématographe (1) is a gem. It offers a window into the mind of a maker who is acutely aware that every artistic choice is also an ideological one. His peculiar directing of actors (he called them his “models”, as opposed to the classic stage variety of “actors”), his emancipation of sound, his belief in minimalism to achieve maximum effect… It is all spelled out in concise yet expressive maxims.