Back by unpopular demand! While Guy Debord, the leading theoretician of the Situationist Internationale, has become "the cornerstone cliché of postmodernism," his paintings, artist's books and films remain unknown, as Keith Sanborn notes. Withdrawn from circulation in 1984, Society of the Spectacle is one such unknown film. Debord's 1973 essayistic film could be described as a translation of his reknowned book of the same name, but this is to under-appreciate the work. Society of the Spectacle is both an adaptation and a provocative example of a favored Situationist tactic, detournement. Defined as "the reuse of already existing artistic elements in a new ensemble," this ploy engages the familiarity of popular images while subverting their embedded ideology. The motive behind this tactic is not to win over the spectator, but to collapse alienated forms of communication. Society of the Spectacle is a complex montage constructed of detourned images from feature films, newsreels, porno, news footage, and commercials. Debord's analysis of a society suspended inside the free space of the commodity infiltrates every frame. The translation of this video re-issue was produced by Keith Sanborn, already known to us for his ambitious revival of René Vienet's Can Dialectics Break Bricks?-Steve Seid