The Society of the Spectacle

Guy Debord's French film joins the text of his own book to images. The voiceover reads sections of the book while the screen shows advertisements, news footage, scenes taken from Hollywood films and recordings of political leaders. The method is diverting someone else's image from its purpose. Debord shoots no new footage; by placing existing material under his own text he reverses its meaning. That is the mechanism described in the book applied in the film. There is no narrative, no character and no story offered to the viewer. The text is dense and theoretical, and the film does not try to ease it; it preserves the difficulty instead. Who it's for: those interested in political theory and experimental cinema. Who it's not for: viewers who do not know the book; the film is not an introduction and is hard to follow without having read it.