Complete Cinematic Works

About this book

"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 Following the still-unsolved assassination of the films' producer in 1984, all of them were withdrawn from circulation for nearly twenty years. Ken Knabb's new translation of Debord's complete film scripts accompanies the long-awaited rerelease of these astonishing works, which are like nothing else in cinema history." "Viewers of Debord's first film were outraged to discover that it had no images whatsoever. His subsequent films have plenty of striking images, but most of them are "detourned" from ads, newsclips, or other films. One is an adaptation of his own book, The Society of the Spectacle, easily the most important radical text of the twentieth century. 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."--BOOK JACKET.