----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Corey Creekmur writes: "My understanding is that Debord's films are unavailable, at his request, to anyone in any format. Perhaps this will change, unfortunately, with his death; this was the case with Jack Smith's and Andy Warhol's films, which were withheld from distribution by the filmmakers themselves until their deaths; I've wondered if the films of the late Gregory Markopoulous -- which he withdrew from American audiences -- might finally again see the light of day/the screen. This is an interesting question of course, for debate: should we be able to see the work of a filmmaker even if that filmmaker doesn't want us to? Should we be so eager to disrespect the filmmaker's wishes after their deaths?" That is indeed an interesting question, worthy of consideration in an ethics class. There are, of course, analogous cases in the other arts--painters who wanted their work destroyed, Kafka asking Max Brod to burn his work, etc. Are we allowed to say that the artist is wrong? The world, I think, would be a (culturally) poorer place without Kafka's work. Does time mitigate an artist 's wishes? Would we suppress a film by Griffith that he did not want seen (though such a case is hard to imagine). What about artists whose work should *not* have been released--or perhaps it's better to say, add little to our understand of their oeuvre, eg. the last Hemingway novel released about ten years ago? And then there are those artists who deliberately withhold their work for market or other considerations--Hitchcock's five films that were held until well after his death (including REAR WINDOW and VERTIGO). It is worth thinking about. --Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN