Guy Debord Filmography

Hurlements en faveur de Sade [Howls for Sade]
France, 1952
Written and directed by Guy Debord
Voice 1: Gil J Wolman
Voice 2: Guy Debord
Voice 3: Serge Berna
Voice 4: Barbara Rosenthal
Voice 5: Jean-Isidore Isou
35mm, B&W, 75 minutes

Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps
[On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time]
France, 1959
Written and directed by Guy Debord.
Assistant Director: Ghislain de Marbaix
Cameraman: André Mrugalski
Assistant Cameraman: Jean Harnois
Editing: Chantal Delattre
Continuity: Michèle Vallon
Grip: Bernard Largemain
Voice 1: Jean Harnois
Voice 2: Guy Debord
Voice 3: Claude Brabant
Music: George Frederick Handel, Michel-Richard Delalande
Laboratory: GTC Joinville
Production: Dansk-Fransk Experimental- filmskompagni
35mm, B&W, 20 minutes

Critique de la séparation [Critique of Separation]
France, 1961
Written and directed by Guy Debord
Cameraman: André Mrugalski
Assistant Cameraman: Bernard Davidson
Editing: Chantal Delattre
Continuity: Claude Brabant
Grip: Bernard Largemain
Music: François Couperin, Joseph Bodin de Boismortier
Voice: Guy Debord
Voice (during the credits): Caroline Rittener
Actress: Caroline Rittener
Laboratory: GTC Joinville
Production: Dansk-Fransk Experimental- filmskompagni
35mm, B&W, 20 minutes

La Société du Spectacle [The Society of the Spectacle]
France, 1973
Written and directed by Guy Debord (adapted from his 1967 book)
Assistant Directors: Jean-Jacques Raspaud, Gianfranco Sanguinetti
Cameraman: Antonis Georgakis
Assistant Cameraman: Philippe Delpont
Editing: Martine Barraqué
Editing Assistant: Manoela Ferreira
Documentalist: Suzanne Schiffmann
Sound: Antoine Bonfanti
Production Director: Christian Lentretien
Music: Michel Corrette
Laboratory: GTC Joinville
Production: Simar Films
Producer: Gérard Lebovici
Voice: Guy Debord
35mm, B&W, 90 minutes

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 the Judgments, Pro or Con, Thus Far Rendered on the Film “The Society of the Spectacle”]
France, 1975
Written and directed by Guy Debord
Editing: Martine Barraqué
Editing Assistant: Paul Griboff
Sound Mixing: Paul Bertauld
Laboratory: GTC Joinville
Production: Simar Films
Producer: Gérard Lebovici
Voice: Guy Debord
35mm, B&W, 20 minutes

In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni [We turn in the night, consumed by fire]
France, 1978
Written and directed by Guy Debord
Assistant Directors: Elisabeth Gruet, Jean-Jacques Raspaud
Cameraman: André Mrugalski
Assistant Cameraman: Richard Copans
Editing: Stéphanie Granel
Editing Assistant: Christine Noël
Grip: Bernard Largemain
Sound Mixing: Dominique Dalmasso
Sound Effects: Jérôme Levy
Documentalist: Joëlle Barjolin
Music: François Couperin; Benny Golson (Whisper Not, performed by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers)
Laboratory: GTC Joinville
Production: Simar Films
Producer: Gérard Lebovici
Voice: Guy Debord
35mm, B&W, 95 minutes

Guy Debord, son art et son temps [Guy Debord, His Art and His Time]
France, 1994
Written by Guy Debord
Directed by Brigitte Cornand
Editing: Jean-Pierre Baiesy
Production: Canal Plus, Institut national d’audiovisuel
Producer: Alain de Greef
Music: Lino Leonardi (originally written for François Villon’s poems).
Video, B&W, 60 minutes

[NOTE: The script of the latter video was not included in the 2003 edition of Complete Cinematic Works. It will, however, be included in the revised and expanded edition that PM Press will be publishing in December 2025.]

All seven of these films were reissued in a three-DVD set: Guy Debord: Oeuvres Cinématographiques Complètes (Gaumont Video, 2005). That set (prepared by Olivier Assayas and including a 130-page booklet of documents) is no longer available, but various versions of the individual films can be found online, many of them dubbed or subtitled in English and other languages. For links to them and other information about Debord’s films, see www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord.films.

Unrealized Film Projects

Hurlements en faveur de Sade (first version)
The initial script, published in the lettrist journal Ion #1 (April 1952) and reprinted in Berréby’s Documents relatifs à la fondation de l’Internationale Situationniste (pp. 113-123), was rather different from the final version (though it included many of the same lines) and also specified a number of images. Soon thereafter Debord revised the script and eliminated all the images, and this earlier version was never realized.

La belle jeunesse [Beautiful Youth]
Mentioned, along with other proposed films by other LI members, in Internationale Lettriste #3 (1953; reproduced in Berréby, Documents, p. 157).

Portrait d’Ivan Chtcheglov [Portrait of Ivan Chtcheglov]

Les aspects ludiques manifestes et latents dans la Fronde [Hidden and Manifest Playful Aspects in the Fronde]

Éloge de ce que nous avons aimé dans les images d’une époque [Homage to What We’ve Loved in the Images of an Era]

Préface à une nouvelle théorie du mouvement révolutionnaire [Preface to a New Theory of the Revolutionary Movement]

These four titles were listed on the back cover of Contre le Cinéma (1964) as films that Debord proposed to make if he could find a producer willing to grant him total artistic freedom. This did not happen until he met Gérard Lebovici several years later. (The more modest production expenses of Debord’s earlier short films were covered by Asger Jorn.) Although none of these projects were ever realized, elements from some of them were probably incorporated into Debord’s later films.

Traité de savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations [Treatise on Living for the Young Generations]
In an internal SI letter (April 27, 1970) Debord mentioned that in addition to filming his own book (The Society of the Spectacle) he would also like to film Raoul Vaneigem’s Traité (known in English as The Revolution of Everyday Life). The bitter split between the two shortly thereafter prevented this from ever happening.

De l’Espagne [On Spain]
Des Contrats includes a 1982 contract between Debord and Soprofilms (owned by Lebovici but distinct from Simar Films) granting Debord an allowance for an 18-month period during which he would investigate the feasibility of making a long film (2-4 hours) that would represent “an exhaustive and definitive examination of the spirit of modern Spain, from the fifteenth century to the present. Avoiding both exoticism and patriotism, this film will not express what foreigners (Europeans, Americans, Japanese, etc.) may imagine about this subject, nor even what Spaniards themselves may believe, but what Spain really is.” The film would have examined contemporary Spain, but would also have included historical reenactments; and “for several obvious historical and cultural reasons” it would have been “centered on Andalusia.” It is unclear how serious Debord was about this project. In any case, following the assassination of Lebovici (March 1984) he abandoned it.

Related Books

Internationale Situationniste: 1958–1969 (Van Gennep, 1970; Champ Libre, 1975; Fayard, 1997). 700-page facsimile reprint of all twelve issues of the French SI journal. Selections are translated in Ken Knabb’s Situationist International Anthology (revised and expanded edition, PM Press, 2024).

Guy Debord, La Société du Spectacle (Buchet-Chastel, 1967; Champ Libre, 1972; Gallimard, 1992). Translated by Fredy Perlman et al. (Black & Red, 1970; revised 1977; reprinted by AK Press, 2005); by Donald Nicholson-Smith (Zone, 1994); and by Ken Knabb (online 2002; Rebel Press, 2004; revised and annotated edition, Bureau of Public Secrets, 2014; new PM Press edition, 2024).

Contre le Cinéma (Institut Scandinave de Vandalisme Comparé, 1964). Illustrated scripts of the first three films, with an introduction by Asger Jorn.

Oeuvres cinématographiques complètes: 1952–1978 (Champ Libre, 1978; Gallimard, 1994). Illustrated scripts of all six films.

Ordures et décombres déballés à la sortie du film “In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni” par différentes sources autorisées (Champ Libre, 1982). Fourteen reviews of In girum reproduced in full without any comment.

In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni: Édition critique (Lebovici, 1990; Gallimard, 1999). Separate edition of the film’s voice-over text with annotations by Debord. The Gallimard edition adds some other documents by Debord plus the reviews previously published in Ordures et décombres (including two additional reviews).

Des contrats (Le Temps Qu’il Fait, 1995). Three of Debord’s film contracts with Gérard Lebovici.

The script of the 1994 video Guy Debord, son art et son temps was first published posthumously in Debord’s Oeuvres (Gallimard, 2006), pp. 1870–1878.

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In girum was first translated by Lucy Forsyth (Pelagian, 1991). Translations of the other five films (by Ken Knabb, Richard Parry, Fredy Perlman, and Keith Sanborn) were published in Richard Parry (ed.), Society of the Spectacle and Other Films (Rebel Press, 1992). An alternative photocopy edition of the Society of the Spectacle script (Not Bored, 1996) used the Nicholson-Smith translation instead of the Perlman one. Keith Sanborn used his own translations in preparing subtitled videotapes of The Society of the Spectacle (1996) and Refutation of All the Judgments (2001). Ken Knabb translated all six films plus related documents in Complete Cinematic Works (AK Press, 2003). The revised and expanded edition (PM Press, 2026) has added the final video, Guy Debord: His Art and His Time.

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Thomas Y. Levin’s Dismantling the Spectacle: The Cinema of Guy Debord (1987) was the first serious and substantial study of Debord’s films in any language, and it is still probably the best general introduction. It has been included in two or three print anthologies and is also online at www.bopsecrets.org/CF/levin.htm.

For more detailed articles on each of the films, see Grey Room on Debord’s Cinema (MIT Press, 2013), online at https://1000littlehammers.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/grey-room-on-debords/.

There are also at least four books in French, all competent and informative:

Antoine Coppola, Introduction au cinéma de Guy Debord et de l’avant-garde situationniste (Sulliver, 2003).

Guy-Claude Marie, Guy Debord: de son cinéma en son art et en son temps (Vrin, 2009).

Fabien Danesi, Le cinéma de Guy Debord, ou la négativité à l’oeuvre (Paris Expérimental, 2011).

Fabien Danesi, Emmanuel Guy, and Fabrice Flahutez, La fabrique du cinema de Guy Debord (Actes Sud, 2013).

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The above texts are more or less directly related to Debord’s films. A far more extensive bibliography, with comments on more than a hundred books in French or English by or about Debord or the SI, is included in the latest edition of the SI Anthology (PM Press, 2024). The same bibliography, continually updated, can be found online at this website: www.bopsecrets.org/SI/bibliog.htm.

From Guy Debord’s Complete Cinematic Works: Revised and Expanded Edition (PM Press, 2026; translated and edited by Ken Knabb), which includes the scripts of all seven of Debord’s films along with illustrations, documents, and extensive annotations. For further information, see Guy Debord’s Films.