Postcards from the Cinema

Serge Daney was a writer and eventually editor-in-chief for the highly influential film journal Cahiers du cinema. He went on to write for the newspaper Liberation, and founded the film journal Trafic. Translated from the French by Paul Grant

'This long overdue introduction in English to the greatest French film critic since Andre Bazin helps to show what keeps Daney's work vital, eye-opening, and even timely.'Jonathan Rosenbaum, Film Critic, Chicago Reader'Perched well above cinema studies, Serge Daney wrote and spoke of films in thrilling sentences, unrivalled in insight, moral fervor and sheer genius. Easily the best critic of his day.'Dudley Andrew, Yale University'Serge Daney was the end of criticism as I understood it.'Jean Luc Godard'Only Serge Daney could serve as the guide through this labyrinth of images.'Wim Wenders'Serge Daney knew something about cinema that no one else knew.'Olivier Assayas'Our most scrupulous and inspired film critic.'Raymond Bellour'Cinema is the only thing at our disposal with which we can recognize ourselves in today's images. As an instrument it's inevitably inadequate, but it's the only one.' Serge Daney'Postcards from the Cinema is a book tha

• Introduction by Paul Grant Preface 1. The Tracking Shot in Kapo 2. Cine-biography 3. Cinema and History 4. Travelling Cinephile 5. A Night in Ronda 6. Cinema Would be the Promise of the World 7. Cinema and Communism: In Defense of a Counter Society 8. Experience: From Cahiers to Liberation 9. Cinema and Television: Departure and Return 10. The Two Cinemas Notes