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of them were withdrawn from circulation for nearly twenty years.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 (Becker-Ho) Debord 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. Note: This book is temporarily out of print. It will be republished by PM Press in 2025. Meanwhile, used copies can be found here.
In 2005 there were several retrospectives of the films in France, and 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 by Gaumont Video. This boxed set, which also included a 138-page booklet of texts and illustrations, is now out of print.
The first “official” American screening of a Debord film with the 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 the authorized subtitling first took place March 1, 2009, at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (New York). It had been hoped that these and other similar showings that followed would generate interest from some major American film distributor (who would in the process have assured professional-quality subtitling and/or dubbing, as well as more widespread publicity and distribution), but this did not happen. Presumably such distributors felt that there was little money to be made from theater showings, and that DVD sales would be undercut by the already widespread copying and bootlegging of the films.
However that may be, at present there are still no definitive English versions of Debord’s films. Instead, there has been an assortment of unofficial versions (in addition to a giddy array of takeoffs or would-be “updates” of The Society of the Spectacle). The French originals and various translated versions (dubbed or subtitled) can be found at Ubu.com, at Situationistfilm, and on YouTube, and there are have also been some bootleg DVDs. I particularly recommend the two dubbed versions produced by Konrad Steiner and read by Dore Bowen, which can be viewed or downloaded at The Society of the Spectacle and In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni.
Contents of Guy Debord’s Complete Cinematic Works:
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 imus nocte...
Instructions to the In girum Sound Engineer
NOTES [not online]
CHRONOLOGY
FILMOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX [not online]
*The scripts published in Complete Cinematic Works
include the voice-over soundtracks plus detailed descriptions of each image, 62
illustrations, and numerous annotations. The above online excerpts reproduce the
voice-over soundtracks only.
Copyright. Unlike most of the other material that Ken Knabb has published or
put online at this website, the Debord film scripts are copyrighted (as
are the films themselves). The translations in
Complete Cinematic Works are copyright 2003 by Ken Knabb. Knabb will not 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 Ken Knabb. For further information,
please contact him at knabb@bopsecrets.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