ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the phenomenon of cinephilia through the work of two Cahiers du cinéma critics: Pascal Kané and Serge Daney. To reckon with the affective, deeply personal role that his relationship with film played in his life, Serge Daney coined the word ciné-fils (“cine-son”) as a pun on the more usual cinéphile, a term with which Kané has also identified. But their cinephilia has manifested itself in different ways since their time at Cahiers: for Kané, critical writing has taken a back seat to his efforts as a filmmaker, while Daney joined the newspaper Libération in 1981, where he wrote prolifically on contemporary cinema over the following decade. These writings now form a touchstone for understanding the transformations that the cinema underwent during a period of defeat and disorientation for the left-wing cultural milieu with which Daney and Libération were associated.
