Serge Daney

Serge Daney (1944-1992) was a French film critic. In 1964, he started writing for Cahiers du Cinéma. Between 1973 and 1981, he was in charge of the magazine, becoming its co-editor together with Serge Toubiana. The articles Daney wrote for Cahiers in this period were later collected in the book La Rampe (1983). Daney left Cahiers to work for the French daily newspaper Libération, to which he had contributed occasionally since its creation in 1973. This transition followed a shift in his writing, which increasingly focused on the subject of television. The texts he wrote in this period were published in the book Ciné journal 1981-1986, with a preface by Gilles Deleuze. In 1990, Daney co-directed the film Jacques Rivette, le veilleur with Claire Denis. In this documentary, part of the Cinéastes de notre temps series, Daney talks with the French filmmaker and critic Jacques Rivette. Later, in 1991, Daney was one of the principal founders of the film magazine Trafic. His autobiography was recorded in the form of a conversation with Serge Toubiana, reminiscing about Daney’s trajectory and life in film criticism, and was published posthumously in the book Persévérance. Entretien avec Serge Toubiana (1993). In 2011, this book and a collection of his texts were translated into Dutch, titled Volharden and Een ruimte om in the bewegen respectively.