Serge Daney

Quote:
Claire Denis’ first-rate video documentary (1990) about filmmaker Jacques Rivette, produced for French television, has many things to recommend it. The main interviewer is the great critic Serge Daney, who, two years before his death, converses with Rivette while relaxing in a cafe and strolling around Paris (Denis interjects a few questions toward the end); since both men were former editors of Cahiers du Cinema, not to mention groundbreaking and highly articulate critics, they have a lot to discuss apart from Rivette’s filmmaking. Clips from many of Rivette’s major films are included, as are interviews with some of Rivette’s actors, such as Bulle Ogier and Jean-Francois Stevenin. Best of all, the film beautifully captures Rivette the man, as both solitary cinephile and exploratory filmmaker. — Jonathan RosenbaumRead More »

During the Gulf War, Serge Daney wrote that conversation, “a typically Franco-Arab art”, was no longer possible between him and his Arab friends. Here, he is offered a setting – both real and cinematic – in which he can attempt to renew this dialogue, which has been interrupted for a time. His choice of interlocutor was an obvious one: Elias Sanbar, Palestinian, historian, director of the magazine “Études Palestiniennes” and image collector. Sanbar is an exile who archives the memory of his people: press photographs, family albums, postcards and so on. For him, images are proof of his identity. Daney, for his part, has spent most of his life watching films, but has always refused to keep still images. On both sides, there was a strong desire to confront these two attitudes to the image, and turn it into a kind of parable of North-South relations.Read More »

During the Gulf War, Serge Daney wrote that conversation, “a typically Franco-Arab art”, was no longer possible between him and his Arab friends. Here, he is offered a setting – both real and cinematic – in which he can attempt to renew this dialogue, which has been interrupted for a time. His choice of interlocutor was an obvious one: Elias Sanbar, Palestinian, historian, director of the magazine “Études Palestiniennes” and image collector. Sanbar is an exile who archives the memory of his people: press photographs, family albums, postcards and so on. For him, images are proof of his identity. Daney, for his part, has spent most of his life watching films, but has always refused to keep still images. On both sides, there was a strong desire to confront these two attitudes to the image, and turn it into a kind of parable of North-South relations.Read More »

Quote:
The film is part of the television series “La culture en chantiers” (“Culture under Construction”). In the form of a video letter, this film goes up the Seine. Starting with the traces of the Normandy landing of the Americans, it ends in Paris in Jean Genet’s hotel room. It is a voyage made to meditate on the “state of things” in a clear and melancholy way—the mutations in cinema and the media in the year of the Gulf War, in the company of Serge Daney and others.Read More »