Guy Debord and the Documentary

"What makes most documentaries so easy to understand is the arbitrary limitation of their subject matter. They confine themselves to depicting fragmented social functions and their isolated products. In contrast, imagine the full complexity of a moment that is not resolved into a work, a moment whose development contains interrelated facts and values and whose meaning is not yet apparent. This confused totality could be the subject matter of such a documentary." Guy Debord

Guy Debord was concerned with the easiness with which the masses conformed to conventions-political, cultural, economic, etc. His film "On the Passage of a Few Persons through a rather brief moment of time" is one of his most recognizable films. In the documentary, he assumes the God-like voice and describes the objectives of his small group of friends: the breaking of conventional models imposed by the ruling elites in all aspects of society. One of these conventions concerns film and in particular, documentaries. His views are loosely supported with other anonymous voices that come up now and then with a white screen.

Dubord is dissatisfied with the current state of film (in the 1950s and 60s). An advocator of experience over materialism and sponainety over spectacle, Dubord dreamed of a documentary style that would capture the full complexity and details of a single moment or experience. He concludes that it is impossible. What is becomes past in the camera. The camera takes away from the moment. In his view, the best you can do is break the mold just as he does in his films: there is no fixed ending, no conclusions. If anything, he leaves the viewer more troubled and with more questions at the end. Pieces within the documentary that seem out of place are not explained. The whole film is a transmission of thoughts, critiques and wishes.

"Just as there was no profound reason to begin this formless message, so there is none to conclude it. I have scarcely begun to make you understand that I don't intend to play the game."

With this fnal statement in "Critique de la Separation" Dubord gives a concrete final comment that is ironically, abstract and iconoclastic.