Shorts occupy a curious place in film history. To be sure, some of the most important films of all time clock in at only a few minutes, from A Trip to the Moon and Un Chien Andalou to the beloved vignettes that run before each Pixar feature. Yet it’s often unclear what to do with most shorts. Shorts packages are common at film festivals, but they’re a tougher sell to the general public, and you obviously can’t charge full admission to a single short (and what if you can’t find parking and miss it?). One would think the age of streaming would ease the distribution of the short subject, but digital platforms seem to be just as much at a loss; just this week, Netflix is unveiling four short films by Wes Anderson, and appears baffled as to how to advertise them. Ultimately, it’s tough to shake the perception that a short film is either an experimental detour or a stepping stone to making “real” films. Either way, it’s easy to think of them as footnotes, existing outside a director’s proper canon.

Which is a shame, because the short film is a completely valid artform in its own right– and what’s more, it allows us to view a director from an otherwise unseen angle. All of this is why Icarus Films’ new blu-ray (or DVD) set Early Short Films of the French New Wave is such a treasure. Contained across its two discs is some of the least-seen work by some of the greatest filmmakers of all time– including Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Alain Resnais, and Jacques Rivette– as well as some lesser-known directors who were, it would seem, at least as talented. If the title of the set intrigues you, you probably don’t need me to tell you that you need this box set, but just in case: you need this box set.

Actually, the title of the set is perhaps a bit misleading. This is not an all-purpose overview of the French New Wave (casual observers might note the omission of perhaps the best-known short of the nouvelle vague, Chris Marker’s La Jetee). Rather, the set specifically compiles the shorts produced by Pierre Braunberger between 1956 and 1966, taking advantage of a newly instituted government subsidy to revitalize the French film industry. Braunberger had worked for various studios on both sides of the Atlantic (he spent 18 months assisting Irving Thalberg at MGM), but, like many, had become disillusioned with the state of French cinema by the 1950s. Anyone who knows anything about film history knows what happened next: a wave independent filmmakers, led by the so-called “Young Turks” who leapt from the pages of the venerable film journal Cahiers du Cinema, set out to make the movies they wanted to see and, in doing so, changed the trajectory of the artform. Braunsberger, who had developed a knack for spotting talent, pounced, and gave many of them some of their earliest breaks.

The films compiled run the gamut from narrative to documentary (and several points in between), and provide a fascinating range of snapshots of their respective directors. Varda’s documentary voice, for example, is already unmistakable in 1958’s Ô Saisons, Ô Châteaux, a typically cockeyed travelogue of the castles of France (along with the incidental cat and impeccably-dressed model). Resnais’ All the World’s Memory (1956) and The Song of Styrene (1957), meanwhile, are essentially industrial films– the former a profile of the Bibliotheque Française, the latter a guide to the production of polystyrene– albeit two of the most grandiose and visually striking industrial films ever made. Godard’s All the Boys Are Named Patrick (1957) and Charlotte and Her Boyfriend (1958) showcase the director at his most playful, while A Story of Water (co-directed with Truffaut, also ‘58) introduces the experimentalism which would come to define his work. These are, of course, some of the most oft-studied filmmakers on the planet; to find unseen material– even a few minutes worth– is revelatory.

No less revelatory, however, are the lesser-known names. Take, for example, the then-28-year-old Jeanne Barbillon, whose wonderfully titled 1965 short The Botanical Avatar of Mademoiselle Flora, is a standout of the set. The film, about a disillusioned young wife who develops an enigmatic relationship with all forms of plant life, is as funny and wistful as the best of the nouvelle vague. Even at this early stage, Barbillon is clearly a formidable talent, and is backed by some of the true heavyweights of the movement: actress Bernadette Lafont, cinematographer Raoul Cotard, composer Michel Legrand. Yet Barbillon’s career is just as mysterious as her film; she directed and/or wrote a couple more shorts in the ‘60s, directed a single TV movie in the 1984, then seems to have vanished off the face of the earth (a cursory search does not even reveal whether she’s currently alive). To discover such a striking work in such an exhaustively covered period of filmmaking shows how spotty the fossil record truly is when it comes to short film.

The restoration work on this set is remarkable and clearly painstaking; these films, which were shot on 16mm nearly 70 years ago, look like they could have been made yesterday. The black and white films are crisp and clean, and the (less common) color films pop. The liner notes, on the other hand, are informative, but perhaps not as much as they could be. Archivist Eric Le Roy provides an in-depth look at Braunberger, a crash course on the new wave, and brief bios of Barbillon, Maurice Pialat, Guy Gilles, and Jean Rouch, but many of the films and directors present are entirely unmentioned. I would, for example, have loved to learn how Melvin Van Peebles, the set’s sole American (and sole Black) filmmaker, came to be involved with Braunberger and the nouvelle vague, but his presence goes entirely unremarked upon (Van Peebles’ entry, the charming, silent 1961 film 500 Francs, is markedly different from the director’s later and better-known works, but his maverick sensibility does show through, particularly in Van Peebles’ deliberately abrasive violin score). This is where the set might have benefitted from the talent pool of Kino Lorber or the Criterion Collection, whose sets regularly include multiple essays from varying perspectives. I learned a lot I didn’t know from this set, but it left me hungry for more information.

Still, I can’t knock this set, as its very existence is a gift. The French New Wave was one of the most vital movements in the medium’s history, and the roll call of directors on the front cover will be self-explanatory to any cinephile (and it doesn’t stop there: eagle-eyed viewers will spot such notable names as Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, Chris Marker, and Jean-Marie Straub in assorted behind-the-scenes and acting roles). Unless you have dedicated your entire life to studying film history, I promise you there are things here you have never seen before (as I write this, Guy Gilles’ Paris, A Winter’s Day has been logged only twice on Letterboxd, and one of those is me). More importantly, it provides some incredible filmmaking which stands on its own right: Rivette’s droll comedy of manners Fool’s Mate; François Reichenbach’s The Marines, an industrial documentary which the director converted into a polemic following a horrific training accident (only to be edited back by the US Military prior to release); Maurice Pialat’s memoiristic Love Exists, which captures the existential angst of the working class as well as anything by Ken Loach. Despite its modest packaging and understated title, this is one of the most essential releases of the year, full-stop.

Early Short Films of the French New Wave is available now on blu-ray and DVD from Icarus Films