La maison cinéma et le monde

Serge Daney (1944-1992) was an influential French film critic who started out at Cahiers du Cinéma, wrote for the daily newspaper Libération on cinema and television and at the end of his life founded the quarterly magazine Trafic. In the first years after his death most of his prolific writing was published yet sparsely translated, making him very little known outside the French speaking world up until a couple of years ago. Daney’s importance to film criticism has been slowly acquiring acknowledgement through the ardent work of his admirers taking up translations themselves. We ought to be grateful to those who didn’t wait for publishers to come to their senses and commission translations, although eventually they did. (The publications in Dutch by Octavo are particularly worth mentioning.) Online, there is the blog Serge Daney in English keeping track of his texts available in English. Sabzian as well has published texts on and by Serge Daney. Find them here.

Reason for bringing all this up is the apparition of the fourth and last volume of La maison cinéma et le monde. 4. Le moment Trafic. 1991-1992 by Éditions P.O.L. Focusing on his last work while launching Trafic, this volume also contains interviews along the lines of the long interview ‘Journey of a Cine-Son’. Read the first twenty pages of this new publication here and let us hope for more brave bloggers and publishers.