Guy Debord’s Films
News on the Films
Guy Debord made six films between 1952 and 1978. Following the still-unsolved assassination of the films’ producer in 1984, all of them were withdrawn from circulation for nearly twenty years.
In 2001 Debord’s widow Alice began the process of rereleasing them with a complete retrospective at the Venice Film Festival. In 2002 there was another complete showing in Paris. It is expected that the films will soon be made generally available in various formats. Whenever I have any further information about this it will be posted on this webpage.
Latest news: The original French versions of the two feature-length films (La Société du Spectacle and In girum imus nocte) will soon be rereleased, but the timing is not yet set. The other four films are not scheduled for rerelease as films, but a complete DVD set of all six films (in the original French) is scheduled for release September 2005. The films will all eventually be subtitled in English and other languages, but it is not known exactly when this will happen.
New Translation of the Scripts
In November 2001 Alice Debord asked me to make a new translation of Guy Debord’s complete film scripts, both for publication and for eventual subtitling of the films. I agreed, and worked on the project for the next year and a half. The book — entitled Complete Cinematic Works and published by AK Press — is now available.
Contents of the book, with online excerpts:
SCRIPTS
Howls for Sade (1952)
On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity
of Time (1959)
Critique of Separation (1961)
The Society of the Spectacle (1973)
Refutation of All the Judgments, Pro or Con, Thus Far Rendered on the Film
The Society of the Spectacle
(1975)
In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978)
DOCUMENTS
A User’s Guide to Détournement
Technical Notes on the First Three Films
Letter about On the Passage
For a Revolutionary Judgment of Art
On The Society of the Spectacle (reply to a critic of the book)
Cinema and Revolution
On The Society of the Spectacle (announcement of the film)
The Use of Stolen Films
The Themes of In girum
Instructions to the In girum Sound Engineer
NOTES
CHRONOLOGY
FILMOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
Copyright. Unlike most of the other material that I have published or
put online at this website, the Debord film scripts are copyrighted (as
are the films themselves). The new translations in
Complete Cinematic Works are copyright 2003 by Ken Knabb. Neither AK
Press nor I
will enforce this copyright against personal or noncommercial
use. Commercial reproduction of any significant portion of those
translations, however, is prohibited without prior written
permission from AK Press. For further information,
please contact
ramsey@akpress.org.
Of related interest at this website:
The Role of Godard (SI)
New Forms of Action Against Politics and Art (Viénet)
On René Viénet’s Film Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (Knabb)
On Guy Debord’s Film The Society of the Spectacle (Knabb)
Radical Film (Knabb)
Designing Pacifist Films (Paul Goodman)
Situationist Bibliography
visits to this webpage since May 2003.