“[T]he poetic construct arises from the fact, if you will, that it is a “vertical” investigation of a situation, in that it probes the ramifications of the moment, and is concerned with its qualities and its depth, so that you have poetry concerned, in a sense, not with what is occuring but with what it feels like or what it means.  […] [T]his may be a little bit clearer if you will contrast it to what I would call the “horizontal” attack of drama, which is concerned with the development, let’s say, within a very small situation from feeling to feeling […].  [Y]ou have the drama moving forward on a “horizontal” plane of development, of one circumstance – one action – leading to another…”

(Maya Deren, ‘Poetry and Film Symposium’, 1953)

Alain Resnais, Toute la mémoire du monde