The Diagonale Archipelago

New quarterly film magazine Narrow Margin centres its second issue on Diagonale, the French alternative film production company created by Paul Vecchiali and others in the late 1970s. The issue includes a short text by Serge Daney reviewing Archipel des amours, one of the film produced by the company. A good opportunity to buy a copy of the new magazine!

The Diagonale Archipelago

First published in Libération on  19-20 March 1983. Reprinted in La maison cinéma et le monde, volume 2, P.O.L., 2002. Translated by "H. A." (likely Hicham Awad from the Narrow Margin editorial board). 

Serge Daney in 2025

Time for the annual round-up of Serge Daney news. Time also to acknowledge that this blog is twenty years old: the first post was in November 2005, so getting on a bit. 

The year properly kicked off with Ted Fendt's incredible gift of two transcripts of Daney's Microfilms radio broadcast (guests: Rivette and Straub). Then followed 12 new translations from various sources.

Some random texts appeared here and elsewhere:

• Jean-Jacques Beineix, Destination Moon… or not!
• City of Pirates
• Pialat’s Dream (Van Gogh)
• Two new Translations on Tennis
• Cinema, Life and Solitude

Two texts on manga:

• Manga, Sake for the Eyes
• Sake for children

The "Romania" series:

• Freeze-Images
• The Judges and the Assassin
• Romania, Year Zero
• Nicolae and Elena Bequeath their Bodies to TV

In September, the London ICA hosted a Serge Daney film cycle, accompanied by a special edition of Sabzian. This blogged played its part with a translation of an extract of Pierre Eugène's book on Daney (Pierre was one of the participant to this rare gathering of "Daneyans"– a term coined by Nicholas Elliot).

Few other news. Pierre Eugène mapped Daney's travels. Emmanuel Burdeau mentioned again his project of a book on Serge Daney ("perhaps the most important book that I'll ever write"). As far as we know, Christine Pichini may still be translating the volume 2 of Cinema House, and Nicholas Elliot may still intend to translate Cine journal when the rights are sorted (both for the publisher Semiotext(e)). Let's hope these projects progress or come through in 2026. 

Happy new year to you all!