1
00:01:35,537 --> 00:01:37,131
This neighborhood
was designed...
2
00:01:37,333 --> 00:01:40,345
for the wretched dignity
of the petty bourgeoisie,
3
00:01:40,564 --> 00:01:44,334
for respectable occupations
and intellectual tourism.
4
00:01:49,413 --> 00:01:51,920
The sedentary population
of the upper floors...
5
00:01:52,089 --> 00:01:54,596
was sheltered from the
influences of the street.
6
00:01:58,536 --> 00:02:00,791
The neighborhood itself
has remained the same.
7
00:02:00,976 --> 00:02:03,955
It was the external
setting of our story,
8
00:02:18,672 --> 00:02:20,287
where a few people
put into practice...
9
00:02:20,506 --> 00:02:25,471
a systematic questioning of all the
works and diversions of a society,
10
00:02:25,875 --> 00:02:28,871
a total critique of its
notion of happiness.
11
00:02:29,302 --> 00:02:33,426
These people also scorned
"subjective profundity."
12
00:02:33,628 --> 00:02:35,429
The only thing that
interested them...
13
00:02:35,614 --> 00:02:39,451
was a satisfactory concrete
expression of their own lives.
14
00:03:03,318 --> 00:03:06,936
Human beings are not fully
conscious of their real lives.
15
00:03:07,105 --> 00:03:12,112
Groping in the dark,
overwhelmed...
16
00:03:12,364 --> 00:03:14,704
by the consequences
of their acts,
17
00:03:14,939 --> 00:03:18,238
at every moment,
groups and individuals...
18
00:03:18,397 --> 00:03:21,780
faced with outcomes
they had not intended.
19
00:03:31,628 --> 00:03:34,927
They said that oblivion
was their ruling passion.
20
00:03:35,213 --> 00:03:37,321
They wanted to reinvent
everything each day;
21
00:03:37,477 --> 00:03:40,523
to become the masters
of their own lives.
22
00:03:47,540 --> 00:03:50,064
Just as we do not judge
an individual by...
23
00:03:50,333 --> 00:03:52,723
what he thinks
about himself,
24
00:03:52,849 --> 00:03:56,299
we cannot judge such a
period of transformation...
25
00:03:56,451 --> 00:03:58,504
by its own consciousness.
26
00:03:58,731 --> 00:03:59,909
On the contrary,
27
00:04:00,111 --> 00:04:02,400
this consciousness
must be understood...
28
00:04:02,534 --> 00:04:04,907
as reflecting the contradictions
of material life,
29
00:04:05,134 --> 00:04:06,767
the conflict between...
30
00:04:06,951 --> 00:04:11,445
social conditions and the
forces of social production.
31
00:04:17,332 --> 00:04:19,419
Advances in the
harnessing of nature...
32
00:04:19,536 --> 00:04:22,170
were not yet matched
by a corresponding...
33
00:04:22,389 --> 00:04:24,392
liberation of everyday life.
34
00:04:24,964 --> 00:04:26,445
Youth passed away...
35
00:04:26,621 --> 00:04:29,903
among the various
controls of resignation.
36
00:04:31,367 --> 00:04:33,404
Our camera has
captured for you...
37
00:04:33,521 --> 00:04:37,039
a few glimpses of an
ephemeral microsociety.
38
00:04:37,645 --> 00:04:39,690
Knowledge of
empirical facts...
39
00:04:39,825 --> 00:04:42,046
remains abstract
and superficial...
40
00:04:42,222 --> 00:04:46,127
as long as it is not concretized by
being related to the whole situation.
41
00:04:46,320 --> 00:04:48,859
This is the only method that
enables us to supersede...
42
00:04:49,044 --> 00:04:50,828
partial and abstract problems,
43
00:04:50,963 --> 00:04:53,132
and get to their
concrete essence,
44
00:04:53,390 --> 00:04:56,100
and thus implicitly
to their meaning.
45
00:04:56,556 --> 00:04:59,232
This group lived on the
margins of the economy.
46
00:04:59,484 --> 00:05:02,514
It tended toward a role
of pure consumption,
47
00:05:02,682 --> 00:05:05,981
particularly the free consumption
of its own time.
48
00:05:06,259 --> 00:05:09,187
It thus found itself
directly involved in...
49
00:05:09,297 --> 00:05:11,855
qualitative divergences
from ordinary life,
50
00:05:12,040 --> 00:05:15,793
but deprived of any means to
influence those divergences.
51
00:05:20,387 --> 00:05:23,854
The group ranged over
a very small area.
52
00:05:24,174 --> 00:05:27,245
The same times brought them
back to the same places.
53
00:05:27,414 --> 00:05:29,391
No one wanted to
go to bed early.
54
00:05:29,711 --> 00:05:33,119
Discussions continued
on the meaning of it all...
55
00:05:38,384 --> 00:05:40,488
"Our life is a journey,
56
00:05:40,606 --> 00:05:42,726
in winter and night.
57
00:05:42,911 --> 00:05:45,284
We seek our passage..."
58
00:05:54,919 --> 00:05:57,771
The literature they had
abandoned nevertheless...
59
00:05:57,889 --> 00:05:59,572
exerted a delaying
influence,
60
00:05:59,723 --> 00:06:02,786
expressed in some
affective formulations.
61
00:06:04,505 --> 00:06:07,837
There was the fatigue
and the cold of morning...
62
00:06:08,073 --> 00:06:10,681
in this much- traversed
labyrinth,
63
00:06:10,866 --> 00:06:13,845
like an enigma that
we had to resolve.
64
00:06:14,080 --> 00:06:16,908
It was a trompe-l’oeil reality...
65
00:06:17,152 --> 00:06:19,684
through which we
had to discover...
66
00:06:19,903 --> 00:06:23,050
the potential richness
of what was really there.
67
00:06:27,417 --> 00:06:28,898
On the bank of the river...
68
00:06:29,049 --> 00:06:31,709
evening began again;
and the caresses;
69
00:06:31,936 --> 00:06:34,805
and the importance of a
world without importance.
70
00:06:35,074 --> 00:06:38,457
Just as the eyes have a blurred
vision of many things...
71
00:06:38,574 --> 00:06:41,385
and can clearly
see only one,
72
00:06:41,519 --> 00:06:43,488
so the will can strive...
73
00:06:43,605 --> 00:06:47,038
only imperfectly toward
diverse objects...
74
00:06:47,299 --> 00:06:50,968
and can completely
love only one at a time.
75
00:07:03,124 --> 00:07:06,041
No one counted on the future.
76
00:07:13,926 --> 00:07:18,131
It'd never be possible to be
together later, or anywhere else.
77
00:07:18,305 --> 00:07:21,214
There would never
be a greater freedom.
78
00:07:21,522 --> 00:07:24,028
The refusal of time
and of growing old...
79
00:07:24,158 --> 00:07:27,201
automatically limited
encounters in this narrow...
80
00:07:27,312 --> 00:07:28,786
and contingent zone,
81
00:07:28,865 --> 00:07:32,413
where what was lacking
was felt as irreparable.
82
00:07:32,603 --> 00:07:36,429
The extreme precariousness of
their methods for getting by...
83
00:07:36,540 --> 00:07:39,022
without working was at the
root of this impatience...
84
00:07:39,132 --> 00:07:43,385
which made excesses necessary
and breaks irrevocable.
85
00:07:44,701 --> 00:07:47,650
We can never really
challenge any form...
86
00:07:47,823 --> 00:07:49,420
of social organization...
87
00:07:49,547 --> 00:07:52,448
without challenging all of
that organization’s...
88
00:07:52,558 --> 00:07:55,183
forms of language.
89
00:08:09,839 --> 00:08:12,574
When freedom is practiced
in a closed circle,
90
00:08:12,748 --> 00:08:14,977
it fades into a dream,
91
00:08:15,151 --> 00:08:18,013
becomes a mere
image of itself.
92
00:08:31,328 --> 00:08:34,278
The ambiance of play
is by nature unstable.
93
00:08:34,756 --> 00:08:38,384
At any moment "ordinary life"
may prevail once again.
94
00:08:38,779 --> 00:08:41,292
The geographical
limitation of play...
95
00:08:41,419 --> 00:08:44,352
is even more striking than
its temporal limitation.
96
00:08:44,553 --> 00:08:48,569
Every game takes place within the
boundaries of its own spatial domain.
97
00:08:48,901 --> 00:08:50,118
Outside the neighborhood,
98
00:08:50,292 --> 00:08:53,493
beyond its fleeting and continually
threatened changelessness,
99
00:08:53,588 --> 00:08:55,793
stretched a half-known city...
100
00:08:55,872 --> 00:08:58,054
where people met
only by chance,
101
00:08:58,180 --> 00:09:00,488
losing their way forever.
102
00:09:02,219 --> 00:09:03,911
The girls who found
their way there,
103
00:09:04,069 --> 00:09:06,298
because they were legally
under the control of their...
104
00:09:06,472 --> 00:09:08,749
family until the,
age of eighteen,
105
00:09:08,859 --> 00:09:11,689
were often recaptured
by the defenders...
106
00:09:11,879 --> 00:09:13,934
of that detestable institution.
107
00:09:14,534 --> 00:09:18,407
They were generally locked up
under the custody of those creatures...
108
00:09:18,597 --> 00:09:21,838
who among all the bad
products of a bad society...
109
00:09:21,964 --> 00:09:26,399
present the most ugly and
repugnant appearance: nuns.
110
00:09:28,597 --> 00:09:30,829
What makes most
documentaries...
111
00:09:30,940 --> 00:09:32,573
so easy to understand...
112
00:09:32,779 --> 00:09:35,672
is the arbitrary limitation
of their subject matter.
113
00:09:36,083 --> 00:09:39,451
They confine themselves to
depicting fragmented social...
114
00:09:39,561 --> 00:09:41,933
functions and their
isolated products.
115
00:09:42,209 --> 00:09:43,743
In contrast,
116
00:09:43,853 --> 00:09:46,699
imagine the full
complexity of a moment...
117
00:09:46,873 --> 00:09:48,683
that is not resolved
into a work,
118
00:09:48,829 --> 00:09:51,548
a moment whose development
contains interrelated...
119
00:09:51,674 --> 00:09:53,081
facts and values...
120
00:09:53,176 --> 00:09:55,492
and whose meaning
is not yet apparent.
121
00:09:55,784 --> 00:09:58,820
This confused totality could
be the subject matter...
122
00:09:58,883 --> 00:10:01,207
of such a documentary.
123
00:10:07,252 --> 00:10:11,474
The era had attained a level of
knowledge and technologies...
124
00:10:11,616 --> 00:10:15,094
that made possible, and
increasingly necessary,
125
00:10:15,213 --> 00:10:17,797
a direct construction
of all the aspects...
126
00:10:17,940 --> 00:10:21,417
of a mentally and materially
liberated way of life.
127
00:10:21,797 --> 00:10:24,706
The appearance of these
superior means of action,
128
00:10:24,856 --> 00:10:27,702
though they remained unused
because of the delays...
129
00:10:27,805 --> 00:10:30,634
in the project of abolishing
the commodity economy,
130
00:10:30,761 --> 00:10:33,599
ad already revealed the
obsolescence of all aesthetic activity,
131
00:10:33,757 --> 00:10:36,777
whose ambitions and powers
had both dwindled away.
132
00:10:36,856 --> 00:10:38,650
The decay of art...
133
00:10:38,809 --> 00:10:42,065
and of all the old
codes of conduct...
134
00:10:42,216 --> 00:10:45,473
had formed our
sociological background.
135
00:10:46,777 --> 00:10:49,381
The ruling class’s monopoly
on the instruments...
136
00:10:49,488 --> 00:10:51,441
we needed in order to...
137
00:10:51,536 --> 00:10:54,650
implement the collective
art of our time...
138
00:10:54,872 --> 00:10:58,872
had left us completely outside
the official cultural production,
139
00:10:59,046 --> 00:11:00,769
which was devoted to...
140
00:11:00,927 --> 00:11:04,279
illustrating and repeating
the past.
141
00:11:04,903 --> 00:11:07,354
An art film on
this generation...
142
00:11:07,511 --> 00:11:11,053
can only be a film about
its lack of real creations.
143
00:11:14,061 --> 00:11:18,267
Others unthinkingly followed the
paths learned once and for all,
144
00:11:18,488 --> 00:11:20,227
to their work and
their home,
145
00:11:20,329 --> 00:11:22,590
to their predictable future.
146
00:11:22,882 --> 00:11:26,210
For them duty had already
become a habit,
147
00:11:26,312 --> 00:11:28,226
and habit a duty.
148
00:11:28,573 --> 00:11:31,577
They did not see the
deficiency of their city.
149
00:11:31,759 --> 00:11:35,387
They thought the deficiency
of their life was natural.
150
00:11:39,810 --> 00:11:42,656
We wanted to break out
of this conditioning,
151
00:11:42,798 --> 00:11:45,834
in search of different uses
of the urban landscape,
152
00:11:45,952 --> 00:11:48,039
in search of new passions.
153
00:12:00,072 --> 00:12:02,961
The atmosphere of a few
places gave us intimations...
154
00:12:03,119 --> 00:12:05,348
of the future powers
of an architecture...
155
00:12:05,474 --> 00:12:07,021
that it would be necessary...
156
00:12:07,179 --> 00:12:11,353
to create in order to provide the
setting for less mediocre games.
157
00:12:11,724 --> 00:12:14,135
We could expect nothing
of anything...
158
00:12:14,277 --> 00:12:17,392
that we ourselves
had not altered.
159
00:12:19,354 --> 00:12:21,979
The urban environment
proclaimed the orders...
160
00:12:22,090 --> 00:12:24,379
and tastes of the
ruling society...
161
00:12:24,497 --> 00:12:27,564
just as violently as
the newspapers.
162
00:12:28,138 --> 00:12:30,146
Man unifies the world,
163
00:12:30,257 --> 00:12:32,414
but man has extended
himself everywhere.
164
00:12:32,541 --> 00:12:36,430
People can see nothing around
them that is not their own image;
165
00:12:36,596 --> 00:12:38,287
everything speaks to
them of themselves.
166
00:12:38,413 --> 00:12:41,006
Their very landscape
is animated.
167
00:12:41,266 --> 00:12:43,716
Obstacles were everywhere.
168
00:12:43,843 --> 00:12:47,447
And they were
all interrelated,
169
00:12:47,851 --> 00:12:51,044
maintaining a unified
reign of poverty.
170
00:12:55,092 --> 00:12:57,620
Everything was connected,
it was necessary...
171
00:12:57,731 --> 00:13:01,339
to change everything through
a unitary struggle, or nothing.
172
00:13:01,512 --> 00:13:03,746
It was necessary to link
up with the masses,
173
00:13:03,841 --> 00:13:06,444
but sleep was
all around us.
174
00:13:06,778 --> 00:13:10,130
The dictatorship of the proletariat
is a relentless struggle,
175
00:13:10,225 --> 00:13:11,774
bloody and bloodless,
176
00:13:11,858 --> 00:13:14,720
violent and peaceful,
military and economic,
177
00:13:14,863 --> 00:13:16,965
educative and
administrative,
178
00:13:17,100 --> 00:13:20,379
against the forces and
traditions of the old society.
179
00:13:23,098 --> 00:13:24,766
But in this country,
180
00:13:24,892 --> 00:13:26,306
it is once again...
181
00:13:26,496 --> 00:13:30,092
the men of order
who have rebelled...
182
00:13:30,543 --> 00:13:33,531
and reinforced their power.
183
00:13:34,952 --> 00:13:37,857
They've been allowed to
aggravate the grotesqueness...
184
00:13:37,968 --> 00:13:40,683
of the ruling conditions
according to their will,
185
00:13:40,857 --> 00:13:45,030
embellishing their system with the
funereal ceremonies of the past.
186
00:13:46,433 --> 00:13:47,556
Years,
187
00:13:47,666 --> 00:13:50,642
like a single instant
prolonged to this moment,
188
00:13:50,769 --> 00:13:52,413
come to an end.
189
00:13:54,081 --> 00:13:56,911
What was directly lived...
190
00:13:57,101 --> 00:13:59,346
reappears frozen
in the distance,
191
00:13:59,575 --> 00:14:02,768
engraved in the tastes
and illusions of an era...
192
00:14:02,879 --> 00:14:05,076
and carried off with it.
193
00:14:13,053 --> 00:14:16,484
The appearance of events
that we have not created,
194
00:14:16,689 --> 00:14:19,282
of events that others have
in fact created against us,
195
00:14:19,409 --> 00:14:22,855
now obliges us to be
aware of the passage of time...
196
00:14:23,069 --> 00:14:24,334
and its results,
197
00:14:24,475 --> 00:14:28,776
to assess the transformation
of our own desires into events.
198
00:14:35,677 --> 00:14:38,515
What differentiates the
past from the present...
199
00:14:38,657 --> 00:14:41,993
is precisely its
out-of-reach objectivity.
200
00:14:42,420 --> 00:14:44,760
There is no more should-be;
201
00:14:44,973 --> 00:14:47,282
being has been consumed...
202
00:14:47,495 --> 00:14:49,661
to the point of ceasing
to exist.
203
00:14:50,230 --> 00:14:54,056
The details are already
lost in the dust of time.
204
00:14:54,254 --> 00:14:57,376
Who was afraid of life,
afraid of the night,
205
00:14:57,582 --> 00:15:00,823
afraid of being taken,
afraid of being kept?
206
00:15:02,221 --> 00:15:04,577
What should be
abolished continues,
207
00:15:04,710 --> 00:15:07,012
and we continue to
wear away with it.
208
00:15:07,177 --> 00:15:09,864
We are engulfed.
Separated from each other.
209
00:15:10,117 --> 00:15:12,963
The years pass and we
haven’t changed anything.
210
00:15:28,783 --> 00:15:32,158
Once again, morning
in the same streets.
211
00:15:32,443 --> 00:15:37,170
Once again the fatigue of so
many similarly passed nights.
212
00:15:37,716 --> 00:15:40,530
It is a walk that has
lasted a long time.
213
00:15:44,892 --> 00:15:48,244
Really hard to drink more.
214
00:15:52,498 --> 00:15:55,589
Of course one might
make a film about it.
215
00:15:55,837 --> 00:15:59,284
But even if such a film
succeeded in being as...
216
00:15:59,402 --> 00:16:02,817
fundamentally incoherent
and unsatisfying...
217
00:16:02,983 --> 00:16:04,990
as the reality
it dealt with,
218
00:16:05,299 --> 00:16:07,907
it could never be more
than a re-creation —
219
00:16:08,065 --> 00:16:11,804
as impoverished and false
as this botched tracking shot.
220
00:16:32,676 --> 00:16:35,165
There are now people
who pride themselves...
221
00:16:35,276 --> 00:16:37,781
on being authors of films,
as others were of novels.
222
00:16:37,899 --> 00:16:40,619
Even more backward than
the novelists, since...
223
00:16:40,777 --> 00:16:43,739
they are unaware of the
decomposition and exhaustion...
224
00:16:43,897 --> 00:16:45,763
of individual expression
in our time,
225
00:16:45,921 --> 00:16:48,448
unaware that the arts of
passivity are over and done.
226
00:16:48,585 --> 00:16:51,189
They are sometimes praised
for their sincerity since...
227
00:16:51,284 --> 00:16:53,465
they dramatize with
more personal depth...
228
00:16:53,576 --> 00:16:55,898
the conventions of which
their life consists.
229
00:16:56,103 --> 00:16:58,268
There is talk about
"liberating the cinema."
230
00:16:58,493 --> 00:17:01,086
But what does it matter to us
if one more art is liberated...
231
00:17:01,243 --> 00:17:03,979
to the point that
Tom, Dick or Harry...
232
00:17:04,089 --> 00:17:07,093
can use it to complacently
express their servile sentiments?
233
00:17:07,277 --> 00:17:11,341
The only interesting venture is
the liberation of everyday life,
234
00:17:11,499 --> 00:17:14,107
not only in a
historical perspective,
235
00:17:14,233 --> 00:17:16,146
but for us, right now.
236
00:17:16,683 --> 00:17:19,442
This project implies
the withering away...
237
00:17:19,553 --> 00:17:21,753
of all the alienated
forms of communication.
238
00:17:21,912 --> 00:17:24,425
The cinema, too,
must be destroyed.
239
00:17:30,849 --> 00:17:32,019
In the final analysis,
240
00:17:32,113 --> 00:17:34,825
stars are not created by
their talent or lack of it,
241
00:17:34,920 --> 00:17:38,027
or even by the film
industry or advertising.
242
00:17:38,106 --> 00:17:40,999
They are created by the
need we have for them.
243
00:17:41,102 --> 00:17:44,378
A pathetic need, arising out of
a dismal and anonymous life...
244
00:17:44,504 --> 00:17:47,555
that would like to enlarge
itself to the dimensions...
245
00:17:47,650 --> 00:17:49,212
of cinematic life.
246
00:17:49,378 --> 00:17:53,117
The imaginary life on the screen
is the product of this real need.
247
00:17:53,260 --> 00:17:55,713
The star is the
projection of this need.
248
00:18:09,468 --> 00:18:12,630
The advertisements
during intermissions...
249
00:18:12,772 --> 00:18:16,596
are the truest reflection of
an intermission from life.
250
00:18:22,987 --> 00:18:25,176
To really describe
this era,
251
00:18:25,271 --> 00:18:28,244
it'd no doubt be necessary
to show many other things.
252
00:18:28,354 --> 00:18:29,509
But what would
be the point?
253
00:18:29,619 --> 00:18:31,801
The point is to understand,
254
00:18:31,943 --> 00:18:34,552
what has been done,
255
00:18:34,663 --> 00:18:36,710
and all that remains
to be done,
256
00:18:36,821 --> 00:18:38,781
not to add more ruins...
257
00:18:39,050 --> 00:18:42,512
to the old world of
spectacles and memories.
258
00:18:44,949 --> 00:18:48,000
Subtitles by hellboytr based
on the translation by Ken Knabb
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord.films/passage.htm