Guy Debord, founder of the Situationist International and fomenter of the May 1968 revolt in France, was also the creator of six tantalizingly inaccessible films.
Following the still-unsolved assassination of the films’ producer in 1984, all the films were withdrawn from circulation for nearly twenty years. In 2001 Debord’s widow Alice began rereleasing the films and asked Ken Knabb to translate the scripts into English. He agreed, and his translations were published in 2003.
Technically and aesthetically, Debord’s films are among the most brilliantly innovative works in the history of the cinema. But they are not so much “works of art” as carefully calculated subversive provocations. One of the films is an adaptation of Debord’s own book, The Society of the Spectacle. Others evoke his adventures in the bohemian underworld of 1950s Paris, which he contrasts with the increasingly ignorant, ugly, and alienated world that has since been produced by modern capitalism. In each case Debord simultaneously attacks the film medium itself, challenging spectators to create their own adventures instead of passively consuming the pseudo-adventures that are presented to them.
The book includes numerous illustrations, documents, and annotations, and for this new PM Press edition, Ken has revised his translations, updated the filmography, and added a scathing video that Debord made shortly before his death.