<\/p>\n
GUY DEBORD
\n<\/strong>Saturday 25 October 2008, at 4pm
\nLondon BFI Southbank NFT3<\/p>\nSUR LE PASSAGE DE QUELQUES PERSONNES \u00c0 TRAVERS UNE ASSEZ COURTE UNIT\u00c9 DE TEMPS
\n<\/strong>Guy Debord, France, 1959, 35mm, b\/w, sound, 18 min
\n<\/strong>You have rightly noticed the difference in the text-image relation between the first and second parts of Passage<\/em>. Detourned phrases can be found throughout the film, but the majority are in the first part. My plan was as follows: The film begins like a typical, technically ordinary documentary. Gradually it becomes less clear and more disappointing, which might at first seem to be the result of a pretentious \u2018ideological\u2019 interpretation of an otherwise clear subject, because the text appears increasingly inadequate and pompously inflated in relation to the images (the tone of Lefebvre = Marx-Goldman-Huizinga!). The question then arises: What is the subject of this film? \u2013 which I think represents an irritating and upsetting break with the habitual spectacle. With the appearance of the first blank screen, the film begins to contradict itself in every way \u2013 and thus becomes more clear as its creator takes sides against it. It is both a rather explicitly anti-art-film about the unaccomplished work of this era and an ultimately realistic description of a way of life deprived of coherence and significance. The form corresponds to the content. It does not describe this or that particular activity (merchant marine, oil exploration, some historic monument to admire \u2013 or even to demolish, as in Franju\u2019s magnificent H\u00f4tel des invalides<\/em>), but the very core of present-day activity in general, which is empty. It is a portrayal of the absence of \u2018real life.\u2019 This slow movement of exposure and negation is what I was trying to embody in Passage<\/em>. But very summarily and arbitrarily, I must admit. Despite the prevalent fixation on the economic obstacles, the main problem is actually that short films are quite unsuitable for truly experimental cinema. Their very brevity tends to encourage a moderate, neatly edited form of expression. But it does seem interesting to d\u00e9tourn the fixed form of the traditional documentary, and this tends to tie us to the inviolable 20-minute limit. (Guy Debord, Letter to Andr\u00e9 Frankin, 1960)<\/p>\nIN GIRUM IMUS NOCTE ET CONSUMIMUR IGNI
\n<\/strong>Guy Debord, France, 1978, 35mm, b\/w, sound, 105 min
\n<\/strong>\u2018I will make no concessions to the public in this film,\u2019 says Guy Debord at the beginning of his 1978 film, and he stays true to his word. The palindromically-titled In girum<\/em> (roughly translated as \u2018we spin around the night consumed by fire\u2019) is not so much a difficult film as an act of pure negation from the founder of the Situationist International. Like all of Debord\u2019s films, In girum<\/em> stands apart from cinema, not to mention the modern world as it has evolved into its present state. Images from magazines, comics, and popular films are turned inside out (a process defined by Debord as d\u00e9tournement) to illustrate what he sees as the complete vacuity of mediatized society, of which we the viewers are unknowing participants. To those who complain that they do not understand his purpose or his historical allusions, Debord suggests that they \u2018blame their own sterility and lack of education rather than my methods; they have wasted their time at college, bargain shopping for worn-out fragments of second-hand knowledge.\u2019 In girum imus nocte et consumimur ign<\/em>i is an act of condemnation, but it is also an affirmation \u2013 of our ability to build on the best rather than the worst in mankind, to create a true Utopia rather than a paltry counterfeit. Without exaggeration, this is one of the most provocative experiences you\u2019ll ever have at the movies. (Kent Jones, Film Society of Lincoln Centre)<\/p>\nBack to top<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An extremely rare opportunity to see new 35mm prints of films by French writer and theorist Guy Debord, best known for The Society of the Spectacle. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-london-film-festival-2008","tag-london-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}