Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Daney in 2008

Happy New Year everyone.

A quick look back over 2008, a fairly quiet year in regards to Daney in English.

Five new translations:
Thank you to Steve Erickson and Andy Rector for their help with publishing these texts.


Some disappointing news. POL, the French publishing house who had begun releasing Serge Daney's 'complete' writings back in 2001 told me they have no plans for new volumes (leaving the years 1985 to 1992 in the dark - as well as all the texts they've missed out). And some tentative plans for English books of translations unfortunately didn't fall through.

This blog had just over 3,000 visitors however Google Analytics tells me that many of these came only once and spent less than 10 seconds on the blog. My core audience is therefore the 240 or so loyal readers who came more than three times last year and stayed at least a minute.

Whoever you are, thank you for you interest. I hope this blog and my translations are helpful.

Let's hope for more in 2009.

Monday, December 01, 2008

For a cine-demography

A new translation of an article showing one of Daney's original perspectives on cinema!

A sort of history of cinema comparing the number of spectators and of characters in movies:
  • Classic cinema: a lot of people in a lot of movie theatres watching films with a lot of characters.
  • Modern cinema: fewer and fewer people in already too many movie theatres watching films with fewer and fewer characters.
  • Post-modern cinema: many people in just a few (large) theatres want to see films with just a few characters.
I've just finished the translation and it's available on Steve Erickson's website:


For a cine-demography
The French version was originally published in Liberation, 13 September 1988 and can be found in Serge Daney, Devant la recrudescence des vols de sacs à main, Aléas (http://www.aleas.fr/), 1997.


Since Daney's text is 20 years old, I'm wondering if the metaphor couldn't developed further. Something like a lot of isolated people scattered around the globe (in front of the television, DVDs, internet or at film festivals or in museums) watch many movies with small, minor, ordinary characters. No more heroes except for the fantasy super heroes of Hollywood (Batman, etc.).