Resnais's short films are a remarkable compendium of the philosophic and stylistic elements found in his features, and an important contribution to the distinguished French documentary film tradition.Guernica (Alain Resnais, Robert Hessens, France 1950). "Less an art film on Picasso than a documentary of the destruction and suffering of war, as expressed through paintings, drawings, and sculptures....newspaper headlines and graffiti, combined with Paul Eluard's lyrical commentary (and) Guy Bernard's evocative score into a stylistic unity suggestive of Resnais's later Hiroshima mon amour." (Georges Sadoul) Written by Hessens. Photographed by Henry Ferrand, A. Dumaitre. (12 mins, In English, B&W, 16mm)Toute la mémoire du monde (Alain Resnais, 1956). Resnais in microcosm: time, space, and memory are the hidden subjects of a documentary on the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. The camera follows long walkways, examines dusty corners, rides the elevators. One is reminded of de Chirico, of Cocteau's Orpheus, of Godard's Alphaville; of heaven and of hell. (20 mins, B&W, 16mm, Courtesy MAE)Statues Also Die (Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, France, 1953). (Les Statues meurent aussi). The nature of African art, its sacred world of objects, and the efforts of Europeans to shape it in their own image: a profoundly humanistic film, banned for years. Photographed by Ghislain Cloquet. (27 mins, B&W, Courtesy MAE, permission Edition Presence Africaine)Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, France, 1956). (Nuit et brouillard). Resnais's landmark film on the Nazi death camps and the human capacity to remember and forget. Images of Auschwitz in the present, in slow tracking shots in full color, offer an even more inescapable reality than the archival photos and newsreels. The film owes equally to Resnais's collaborators, the writer and camp survivor Jean Cayrol and the German exile composer Hanns Eisler. Photographed by Sacha Vierny. (30 mins, B&W/Color, Courtesy MAE)Le Chant de Styrène (Alain Resnais, 1958). Commissioned by a polystyrene manufacturer to depict this "noble material...entirely created by man," Resnais frightened his sponsors with this surrealistic film set to a poem by Raymond Queneau and music by Pierre Barbaud. "Perhaps the freest of Resnais's shorts" (Roy Armes). (19 mins, In French only, Color, Courtesy MAE)