Collaboration Conditions
for the Final Video

Dear Brigitte,

This is to confirm the conclusions of our recent conversation in Normandy. I approve, under these precise conditions, your project of directing a one-hour historical program concerning my art and my time.

I will indicate to you — or in some cases I will furnish to you directly — all the visual and audio elements that will be specifically necessary to carry out this project. I will guarantee the pertinence of these elements and the authenticity of their use to treat this subject effectively — an important point, considering how much this subject has been polluted by so many legends. Answering to me alone, you will be completely responsible for determining the appropriate means to carry out this project, without accepting any intervention, restriction, or commentary from anyone else. I don’t want to hear — and I don’t want you to pay any attention to — any comments whatsoever from anyone else, even laudatory ones. It is in fact inconceivable that I would recognize anyone else as having the slightest competence or qualification to judge any aspect of my work or my conduct.

You will also see to it that the production deals with copyright matters with an appropriate precision and firmness.

Best regards,

Guy Debord

Translation by Ken Knabb of a letter from Guy Debord to Brigitte Cornand, March 17, 1993 (reproduced in Debord’s Oeuvres, pp. 1877–1878).

The complete scripts of all of Debord’s films, with illustrations, detailed descriptions of the images, and extensive annotations, are included in Debord’s Complete Cinematic Works (AK Press, 2003; revised and expanded edition: PM Press, 2026). For further information, see Guy Debord’s Films.

Collaboration Conditions for the Final Video

Collaboration Conditions
for the Final Video