Film is often described as a visual art. A medium of light, movement, and composition. It is taught this way, especially in Europe, where the image takes precedence over the word. At universities, the screenplay is rarely treated as literature—it is a technical form, not a poetic one. And yet, for us, the story begins elsewhere.
We do not deny the power of the image. But we question its primacy. Before there is light, there is language. Before movement, there is intention. A sentence can do what a thousand frames cannot: it can hold a contradiction. It can whisper. It can wait.
For too long, the study of film has been confined to narrow corridors—national schools, institutional definitions, inherited hierarchies. But we no longer create within those walls. The world has changed. A filmmaker today may begin in text, code, or voice. They may never touch a camera. They may write their cinema before ever seeing it. And that, too, is film.
The arrival of generative systems has redrawn the map. Scripts can be spoken by synthetic voices. Images can be summoned, remixed, and dissolved in seconds. Films may begin as soundscapes, as animated text, or as recursive narrative loops. In this new terrain, the question is no longer what cinema looks like—but where it starts, and why.
We begin with text. Not as a placeholder for images, but as the first architecture of meaning. Words do not illustrate—they structure. They carve time, define rhythm, create tension before anything is seen. In our work, the image follows the sentence. Not the other way around.
To begin with text is to accept a slower form of clarity. It is a refusal to rely on surfaces. The camera may arrive later—or not at all. What matters first is the line, the voice, the logic beneath sensation. This is not regression. It is craft. The act of writing, in this sense, becomes an editing of possibilities: what belongs, what remains, what waits.
In an age of endless images, the rarest thing is form. Generative visuals are abundant, interchangeable, forgettable. But structure—intention, restraint, rhythm—is scarce. To lead with text is to impose a shape on chaos. It is to decide what deserves to exist before it is rendered. In a saturated field, this is not a limitation. It is a strategy.
This path is not for everyone. It requires patience. A tolerance for the unfinished. A belief that what matters may not be visible right away. But if you have ever felt that something essential is lost in the noise—if you have ever paused a frame and wished it would speak—then you may already be one of us.
We have no uniform, no manifesto pinned to the wall. You will know us by the way we pause. The way we hold a line longer than expected. The way we choose absence over excess. We are not here to compete with spectacle. We are here to remember what the frame forgot.
So write, if you must.
Speak, if the silence allows.
Begin where nothing is visible, and see what holds.
The light will come later—when it’s ready.
And if it doesn’t, the line will remain.