Traveling among the islands of Brittany, filmmakers – myself included – have interrogated the crosscurrents of the cinematic and the oceanic. We have navigated these waters accompanied by the specter of Jean Epstein's own explorations of the region from 1927 to 1948. My investigations of this fluid space have given form to latent proposals found in Epstein's work, which he had begun to elaborate just before his disappearance, among them the theoretical and practical role he accorded to the non-human in the filmmaking process. His cinematic experiment in Brittany began by developing a profound collaboration with the real, initially via the island population with whom he engaged. This evolved into one of Epstein's most striking propositions: that by using cinema to grant perspective to the non-human – to the oceans, the tides, the tempests – humankind gains a vital perspective on itself, a seeming reversal of perception and perspective.

Over several years, I recorded sounds and images on and between the islands of Brittany. Part of this time, I was perched over the Atlantic on the westernmost island of Ouessant, where Epstein shot his last, unfinished film. Once I filtered this material, I placed it in interaction with elements from the vast archives Epstein left behind: interviews, manuscripts, notes scrawled on scraps of paper, newspaper clippings, and images from his films. The connections between these elements have provided clues to understanding the mysterious impulse that drew Epstein to the islands and have revealed the inspiring space his work inhabited when he parted company with cinema. An image of Epstein's oceanic experience/ experiments emerges from three principal sources: materials that document Epstein's making of the maritime films, his theoretical writings on cinema, and the results, half a century later, of my own search – camera and microphone in hand – for the residual traces of his work in Brittany.

Epstein's motives for choosing to work among these rugged islands are evident in the nature of the place itself. Here the cinematograph finds itself operating in a space characterized by potent entities, where an interpenetration of death, fear, and unpredictability are all embodied in and directed by the ocean's flux.