Saturday, December 31, 2022

Serge Daney in 2022

Daney making his only "film": Proof by Prince in 1988
Here's the usual yearly round-up. 

2022 marked thirty years since Serge Daney passed away and, in the context of this blog's title, the big event was the publication of The Cinema House and the World, the first book of English translations of Daney's writings. Clearly the highlight of the year and a must-read if you follow this blog.

I normally do a count of new translations in the year but the new book added about 200 texts. Sticking to new translations freely avaiable, fifteen were released this year, links below.

Night of the Living Dead 

The Off-Screen Discourse 

Political Space - Stories of A

Rio Bravo, An Adult Art

Rio Lobo, The One Grows Old 

Tennnis' Telegenic Advantage

Apocalypse Now

Grey Matter

A Moral of Perception (Straub-Huillet’s From the Clouds to the Resistance)

Notes on Saló

The State - Syberberg (“Hitler, a film from Germany”)

Samuel Fuller, Bad Reputation

White Dog, Samuel Fuller

The Fury of Storytelling (The Big Red One)

Wim's Movie

With now a significant chunk of Daney's writing available in English (although it's still less than 20% of his total output), it can be hard to make sense of the chronology. Check out Daney's bibliography in case it helps. 

Here's to more good news on Daney. There are at least three books on Daney in the making (in French: Pierre Eugène's critical reading of Daney's early period and Emmanuel Bourdeau's biography, and in English: a collection of essays from a multi-year seminar on Daney). We could also see Semiotext(e), the publishers of this year's highlight, release another book. 

I rarely mention non-Daney topics but one can't ignore the passing of the "strobgoard" or "JMS/JLG" (including Danièle Huillet) who were so important to Daney. Major losses.

Happy New Year to you all.