“It is society and not technology that has made cinema what it is. Cinema could have been a historical investigation, or theory, essay, memories. It could have been precisely the film I am making right now.” – Guy Debord (1931–1994)
(We Spin Around the Night Consumed by the Fire, F 1978, 6.11. Introduction: Tom Levin) A Latin palindrome is the title of Guy Debord’s last film, in which he, as narrator, explains that he will make neither concessions to the tastes of his viewers nor to the dominant ideas of his day. After extensively insulting the audience that goes to the cinema to forget its heteronomous life, the film becomes autobiographical, using images from the world of spectacle: advertising brochures, clips from feature films (LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS), comics, aerial footage of Paris, tracking shots through Venice, photographs of friends – all commented on by Debord, with an at times melancholy undertone: “This Paris no longer exists.” His assessment is that one of the great pleasures of his life has been the sensation of the passage of time, and as a witness to the disintegration of social order, he has loved his epoch. ✪
