Bassan was born in Burgas, Bulgaria, of French nationality, in 1948. His family moved to Paris in 1949. He has been interested in all forms of cinema from childhood. He has been a poet since 1964. He was one of the founders with Hubert Haddad of the magazine, . Feeling that he was locked into a post-surrealist form, he chose to write in a "more modern" style as a critic. After writing reviews in specialized magazines, his first "professional" job was for the magazine Politique Hebdo when it was founded in 1970. He co-founded the Collectif Jeune Cinéma in 1971 and collaborated with a large number of magazines and various publications, notably the cinema magazines: Téléciné, Écran, Cinéma différent, La Revue du cinéma, Le Mensuel du cinéma, and the fine arts magazines: Canal, L'Art vivant, and the French national daily newspaper, Libération and Senses of Cinema.
As well as supporting cinema d’auteurs and writing about current productions, Bassan wrote about and encouraged experimental cinema. He was able to follow the evolution this cinema genre more attentively when it enjoyed a resurgence at the end of the 1990s, and write about its young artists. He has written in Bref, a magazine dedicated to short films in which experimental cinema occupies an important part, from its first publication in 1989, His article, Experimental or simply filmmakers? An interview with Stéphane du Mesnildot, Johanna Vaude, David Matarasso and Othello Vilgard, inaugurated this series in Bref number 47. He has written the film column for Europe since 1984, for Bref, since its founding in 1989, for the Encyclopædia Universalis since 1995 and for Zeuxis since 2005. In 1980, he coordinated the numbers 10-11 of the magazine CinémAction with Guy Hennebelle: Avant-garde cinema. He has participated in the Dictionnaire du cinéma, in the Dictionnaire du cinéma mondial, in L'Art du mouvement, in Jeune, dure et pure ! Une histoire du cinéma d'avant-garde et expérimental français and in Une Encyclopédie du court métrage. Raphaël Bassan has been published in three Cahiers de Paris expérimental: number 17, Norman McLaren: Le Silence de Prométhée; number 20, Les 20 ans de Paris expérimental and number 25: Cinéma et abstraction: des croisements. In 2014, he brought together some of his articles on avant-garde films for a book, "Cinéma experimental. Abécédaire pour une contre-culture". For the first time in that kind of publication, the reader can find a large number of articles about French Filmmakers - from the twenties to the present - they're there with international artists of the genre such as Hans Richter and Michael Snow. He have collaborated with Collectif Jeune Cinema from 1971 until today and defended experimental cinema in all kind of supports and practices
Other activities
He coined, in 1989, the theory ofcinema du look, in a study about the films of Jean-Jacques Beineix, Luc Besson and Leos Carax, published by La Revue du Cinéma. These directors were said to favor style over substance, spectacle over narrative; they mixed high culture and pop culture., He has been on numerous radio programs and held a small role in Le Prestige de la mort by Luc Moullet. Some of his poems were republished in the volume: Rites et rituels. He has also made three short films.
Publications
Cinémas d'avant-garde , dir. Raphaël Bassan and Guy Hennebelle, CinémAction n° 10-11, Spring-Summer, 1980
«Bokanowski/Kamler: Deux avant-gardes graphiques,» Canal, n° 49, juillet–septembre 1982.
«L'Ange: Un météore dans le ciel de l'animation,» La Revue du cinéma, n° 393, avril 1984.
Rites et rituels, book of poetry, Europe/Poésie, 2001
Norman McLaren. Le Silence de Prométhée, Les Cahiers de Paris expérimental", n° 17, 2004
Cinéma et abstraction : des croisements, Les Cahiers de Paris expérimental, n° 25, 2007
Cinéma experimental. Abécédaire pour une contre-culture, in French
