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Guy Debord’s 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 Following the still-unsolved assassination of the films’ producer in 1984, all of them were withdrawn from circulation for nearly twenty years.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, and asked Ken Knabb to make a new English translation of Debord’s complete film scripts, both for publication and for subtitling the films. He agreed, and worked on the project for the next year and a half. The book, entitled Complete Cinematic Works, was published in 2003 by AK Press. Click here for information on ordering it. In October 2005 there was a three-week showing of all the films (a complete retrospective each day) in Paris, followed by similar retrospectives in several other French cities. Meanwhile a 3-DVD set of all six films plus the video documentary Guy Debord, son art et son temps (all in the original French) was released in November 2005. This boxed set, entitled Guy Debord—L’Intégral and including a 138-page booklet of texts and illustrations, was originally distributed by GCTHV (Gaumont/Columbia/Tristar Home Video), but it no longer seems to be available from that source. Used copies may be available at various Internet sites. Note, however, that these Gaumont DVDs are coded for Zone 2 (Europe) and will not play on Zone 1 (North American) machines. There are ways of getting around this coding, but they may involve downloading a special software program or getting an “all-region” DVD player. Be sure that you know how to deal with this problem before ordering the Gaumont DVDs. There are as yet no authorized English versions of the films. Meanwhile, however, most of the films can be directly viewed or downloaded at www.ubu.com/film/debord.html and various subtitled or dubbed bootleg versions are circulating. The first “official” American screening of a Debord film with authorized subtitling took place October 3, 2008, at the New York Film Festival (In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni). A complete retrospective of all six of Debord’s films with authorized subtitling took place March 1, 2009, at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (New York).
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