Guy Debord was an experimental motion-picture maker, founder and autocratic head of the Situationist International, ideologue-cum-activist, and "Doctor of Nothing" (as he labels himself in his mock autobiography, Panégyrique, Tome premier, 1989 [translated as Panegyric: Volume I, 1991]). His dialogic cinematic technique and insightful analysis of postmodern, commodity-driven society have had a formative impact on both artists and theoreticians of contemporary, image-obsessed culture.

Debord was born in Paris on 28 December 1931. In 1939, shortly after his father, Martial (a pharmacist), died of tuberculosis and just before the German occupation of France, Debord moved to Nice with his mother, Paulette, and maternal grandmother, Lydie Rossi. While in Nice, Paulette fell in love with an Italian driving-school principal, Domenico Bignoli, their affair culminating in two half siblings for Debord: Michele (born in 1940), whose aimless life ended in suicide (1976) from an overdose of drugs and alcohol, and Bernard (born in 1940). A few years...