Hurlements en faveur de Sade screening with On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rat Series: Film Comment Selects [2009] Director: Guy Debord, Country: France
Hurlements en faveur de Sade
Guy Debord, France, 1952; 75m
Debord’s cinematic debut was cast in a Lettrist spirit, albeit at a level of provocation that made founder Isodore Isou’s film look like something out of Hollywood by comparison. There are no images in Hurlements en faveur de Sade. The soundtrack over a blank white screen is made up of decontextualized phrases pulled from various sources spoken in monotone. The first showing of the film in Paris in June of 1952 caused an uproar, creating a rift among the Lettrists that would lead Debord to form the Situationist International some five years later.
screening with
On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time / Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps
Guy Debord, France, 1959; 18m
also screening with
Critique de la séparation
Guy Debord, France, 1961; 19m
“We have invented nothing,” says Debord on the soundtrack of his 1961 film, whose images include newsreels, comic strips, and haunting footage shot on the streets of Paris in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. “We adapt ourselves, with a few variations, into the network of possible itineraries. We get used to it, it seems.” Along with On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time, this beautiful film marks a second beginning in cinema for Debord, after his break with Isou and the Lettrists.
