"Serge Daney, take one." "RÈgis Debray:" "It;igt;" "Serge DaneyÖlt;/igt;" "It;igt;" "Serge Daney, you were born in 1944.lt;/igt;" "It;igt;" "We know you as a moralist of images,lt;/igt;" "It;igt;or a sociologist of the times, I believe one of the best.lt;/igt;" "It;igt;" "But we donít know you yourself,lt;/igt;" "It;igt;you donít talk about yourself in your articles,lt;/igt;" "It;igt;the times narrate themselves through you.lt;/igt;" "It;igt;" "And..." "It;/igt;" "It;igt;once you called yourself a "Cine-Son",lt;/igt;" "It;igt;cinephile / cine-son,lt;/igt;" "It;igt;as if the image has been your ancestry, your family.lt;/igt;" "It;igt;" "Can you tell us something about the imageslt;/igt;" "It;igt;that looked at you when you were a child,lt;/igt;" "It;igt;and the way you looked at them, as a child and a teenager?" "It;/igt;" "I think the first image that counted for me, almost the definitive image, wasnít a cinema image," "it was the geography atlas." "I thought about it recently and I realized that it was the image that overlooked my childhood, in the sense that at home there was a map which was the map of the world." "Or the maps from school, still very colonial, all multi-colored, with the idea that each country is a different color and the more names on the map, the better." "I very quickly had an extraordinary propensity to memorize names," "I think Iíve always known the capitals of the world," "Iíve always known Honduras was Tegucigalpa, always." "I canít remember a time when I didnít." "All this to say, that it was the enigma of the map that was the first image that gazed at my childhood." "There were no images at home, there was no culture, very few books." "The other formative space was radio." "I am a child of the radio, since there was no TV, and still, cinema came in third, cinema was my mother and my aunt, especially my mother, who would say:" "ìOh, let's not wash the dishes, weíll do it later." "Letís go to the cinema and weíll take the childî." "And so quickly I was dragged along, joyfully, in the neighborhood cinemas of the 11eme." "There were loads of those cinemas, a good dozen." "And I went to see the films that adults went to see." "The only favor they would do me was to go and see swashbucklers." "I loved swashbucklers." "I didnít even realize they were Italian then, they were my favorite, and my mother, of course, preferred melodramas." "Actually, it was always Italy, I realized later, much later." "So the formative, in terms of images, the fundamental image, is the atlas." "So itís not a face, itís not a portrait, but it works as any true image, like a face or a portrait." "Because any true image, in the final analysis, is a face, and any face is a gaze." "So something gazed at me from the geography maps." "I think itís very important, Iím glad I thought about it recently, because itís one of those questions people often ask and every one comes up with their list of the 10 childhood unforgettable emotionsÖ" "No, I think the first image was the map in so far as it was a promise." "Itís a promise that I, grandson of poor people, born at the boundary between the 11eme and the 12eme, where I live now, so really a Paris kid," "1944, in a terribly impoverished and disqualified France, profoundly disqualified, where the Algerian war will soon happen," "I have the feeling" "maybe now Iím reconstructing a lot- to have been the child of those times, obviously Iím not the only one, and to have developed very slowly my relationship to what we call images, especially cinema," "under the auspices of an image more important than all others:" "the geography map, the small Larousse atlas." "And then later the bigger atlases, and when I could buy the most beautiful atlases, I bought them." "And for me no map was ever complete enough, and as soon as I found a mistake it was discarded, and so on." "Itís a childís thing, itís a visual thing, because the map isnít the territory, as Korzibsky says." "But still, from a certain point of view, the territory looks an awful lot like the map." "When you take the plane for the first time, you realize you could be looking at the map." "And I believe that the gaze of the map upon me is programmatic." "Because it was always the map of the world." "I wasnít chauvinistic." "Really not, from birth." "So the far-away countries, the weird and complicated names, the strange drawings made by borders, the names that changed, when Urga becomes Ulan-Bataar," "I have the feeling that something happened behind my back," "I'm rather furious." "So for me cinema is the same, itís a promise, a promise to be one day a citizen of the world." "It;igt;" "Itís a travel that continues?" "It;/igt;" "Itís a travel that continues, but itís mostly the promise of travel." "Iíve travelled a lot, thanks to cinema in fact, film critics travel." "I also travelled of my own free will, out of fancy, out of some kind of mystique of the walker, very fashionable during the 70s." "But I get the feeling that this promise was mostly kept, because Iíve lived from it." "Iíve lived from that world map, itís only now that itís fracturing and becoming politically obsolete." "Itís only now that I look at the map of my childhood, which in fact was Yalta but I didnít realize- lt;igt;" "Now you have to take the pre-1914 maps.lt;/igt;" "Yes." "It;igt;" "Grandfatherís maps are very good.lt;/igt;" "Exactly." "My map has run its course." "Today, Iíve lost interest in geography..." "That's how I realize a life has gone by, because whether Croatians are independent or not, whether theyíre drunk on their Croatian-ness leaves me absolutely cold." "That thereís a new country with a new color called Croatia or Slovenia leaves me stone-cold, whereas when I was small, really small, a new country was like someone being born." "Whence the fact that it was pretty easy for me, as a kid, to be for the independence of Algeria." "I didnít have the slightest trace of a political idea." "It seemed obvious." "It was likeÖ the more, the merrier, and the more images there will be." "And anyway it doesnít change a thing since weíre citizens of the world." "It;igt;" "And you can escape society with images?" "It;/igt;" "It;igt;" "I.e. to find the world you have to run away from home.lt;/igt;" "It;igt;" "How does it happen, this flight?" "It;/igt;" "It;igt;" "Is cinema a refuge, a protection for the adolescent?" "It;/igt;" "Itís well before adolescence, itís childhood, cinema." "Itís not adolescence." "Itís childhood." "Itís a much more intense, much more care-free feeling, and much more serious, of not being part of the world." "Or to only just be tolerated by the world as it is." "And you know by the age of 5, like Duras quoting Queneau saying that a writer knows he is one by the age of 7." "If he hasnít written by the age of 7 itís not worth pushing it." "Itís excessive, but true." "It means you know from the first time you go into the courtyard, on the first day of primary school, that there are people with whom you wonít be friends, and that thereíll be a group of 3 or 4 in a corner, the introverts," "maybe later, as for me, the homosexuals." "In any case the cinephiles, and they wonít share their treasure, they know they belong to another version of the world, or of humanity."