This letter from Eric Pauwels to his daughter is first and foremost a manifesto. In the form of a theoretical exposition, woven with digressions and parentheses (with rare and prodigious ease), Pauwels inaugurates it as a call for "a cinema of the craftsman, of the solitary, almost of the painter. A cinema of gazes, thoughts, and sharing rather than a cinema of power and spectacle."

As in children's tales, animals touch the extraordinary, clowns are sometimes sad, and magic is a part of daily life. As in adult stories, the smell of cigars is a source of inspiration, and beauty can sometimes be found in the most absurd or tragic.

Throughout all these stories, there is water that depicts; that of rain, canals, rivers, and oceans. Besides, there is also a train that talks, the one you take to go to the museum, to travel, or to return home.

All in all, this letter from Pauwels to his daughter is above all a game that, like optical toys, operates on the fascination provoked by light and its movement to illustrate legends and enigmas, both brief and intelligible. With humility and good-naturedness, these pearls a father tells his daughter end up inhabiting us, like those we were told by candlelight in another era. Only, thanks to Pauwels, this memory reveals itself today as precious as a gift, the essence of which is to be shared, simply for pleasure.

Matthew Wolkow
Filmmaker and curious by profession