In 1959, the writer and philosopher Guy Debord, best known for his work on what he called “the society of the spectacle,” made a short film called “On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time.” A simple title, but one with a lot of implications. It could serve as an alternate title for the French film “BPM (Beats Per Minute). Known as “battements par minute” in French, the phrase that initially referred to the human heart was then applied to modern dance music.
The way this movie relates to the Debord title is in the fictionalized story it tells, about the Paris branch of the AIDS activism group ACT UP in the 1990s. Directed by Robin Campillo from a script by Campillo and Philippe Mangeot, the movie opens with a few members of the group storming the stage during a government presentation on their handling of the AIDS crisis. Their shock tactics get a little out of hand, and the movie cuts to a meeting of the group after the fact, comparing