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Keith Sanborn on Guy Debord's Films
February 26, 2006 - 4:57pm -- autonomedia
Return of the Suppressed
Keith Sanborn, Art Forum
"Guy Deord made very little art, but he made it extreme," says Debord of himself in his final work, Guy Debord, son art et son temps (Guy Debord: His Art and His Time, 1995), an "anti-televisual" testament authored by Debord and realized by Brigitte Cornand. And there is no reason to doubt either aspect of this judgment. While Debord has been known in the English-speaking world since the 1970s as a key figure in the Situationist International and as a revolutionary theorist, it is only in the past decade that his work as a filmmaker has surfaced outside France. One reason is that, in 1984, following the assassination of Debord's friend and patron Gérard Lebovici and the libelous treatment of both men in the French press, Debord withdrew his films from circulation. Though the films were not widely seen even in France, four of them—by the time they were withdrawn—had been playing continually and exclusively for the previous six months at the Studio Cujas in Paris, a theater financed for this purpose by Lebovici.
The communiqué issued by Debord soon after Lebovici's death reads: "Gérard Lebovici having been assassinated, to the applause of a joyful press and a servile public, the films of Guy Debord will never again be projected in France." Three years later, in a letter to Thomas Levin, Debord amended this to: "I should have said: Never again anywhere."So things stood until shortly after Debord's suicide in 1994. By prearrangement with Debord, CANAL+ presented a program on January 9, 1995, consisting of Guy Debord: His Art and His Time, coproduced by CANAL+ and the Institut National de l'Audiovisuel, and two earlier films, La Société du spectacle (The Society of the Spectacle, 1973) and Réfutation de tous les jugements, tant élogieux qu'hostiles, qui ont été jusqu'ici portés sur le film «La Société du spectacle» (Refutation of All Judgments, Whether in Praise or Hostile, Which Have Up to Now Been Brought on the Film "The Society of the Spectacle," 1975). In 2001 the Venice Film Festival presented a retrospective of Debord's films using partially restored prints. In 2003, RAI 3 broadcast the work with Italian subtitles. There have been other screenings, but it was only in 2005 that the films were again projected in Paris.
Return of the Suppressed
Keith Sanborn, Art Forum
"Guy Deord made very little art, but he made it extreme," says Debord of himself in his final work, Guy Debord, son art et son temps (Guy Debord: His Art and His Time, 1995), an "anti-televisual" testament authored by Debord and realized by Brigitte Cornand. And there is no reason to doubt either aspect of this judgment. While Debord has been known in the English-speaking world since the 1970s as a key figure in the Situationist International and as a revolutionary theorist, it is only in the past decade that his work as a filmmaker has surfaced outside France. One reason is that, in 1984, following the assassination of Debord's friend and patron Gérard Lebovici and the libelous treatment of both men in the French press, Debord withdrew his films from circulation. Though the films were not widely seen even in France, four of them—by the time they were withdrawn—had been playing continually and exclusively for the previous six months at the Studio Cujas in Paris, a theater financed for this purpose by Lebovici.
The communiqué issued by Debord soon after Lebovici's death reads: "Gérard Lebovici having been assassinated, to the applause of a joyful press and a servile public, the films of Guy Debord will never again be projected in France." Three years later, in a letter to Thomas Levin, Debord amended this to: "I should have said: Never again anywhere."So things stood until shortly after Debord's suicide in 1994. By prearrangement with Debord, CANAL+ presented a program on January 9, 1995, consisting of Guy Debord: His Art and His Time, coproduced by CANAL+ and the Institut National de l'Audiovisuel, and two earlier films, La Société du spectacle (The Society of the Spectacle, 1973) and Réfutation de tous les jugements, tant élogieux qu'hostiles, qui ont été jusqu'ici portés sur le film «La Société du spectacle» (Refutation of All Judgments, Whether in Praise or Hostile, Which Have Up to Now Been Brought on the Film "The Society of the Spectacle," 1975). In 2001 the Venice Film Festival presented a retrospective of Debord's films using partially restored prints. In 2003, RAI 3 broadcast the work with Italian subtitles. There have been other screenings, but it was only in 2005 that the films were again projected in Paris.