Alexandre Astruc

Alexandre Astruc (13 July 1923 – 19 May 2016) was a French film director, film critic, screenwriter, and novelist. He is best known for his landmark 1948 essay "Naissance d'une nouvelle avant-garde: la " ("The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: The Camera-Pen"), which argued that cinema should become a means of personal expression as flexible and subtle as written language. The concept became a foundational influence on the theorists and filmmakers of the French New Wave. Alongside his extensive critical and literary work, Astruc directed a series of highly literate feature films between 1955 and 1968 before working extensively in television.