Tuesday, October 20, 2015

The Rockumentary King

We're running a training & mentoring programme for Mexican and British documentary film-makers called Docunexion, both in Britain (with Sheffield DOCfest last June) and in Mexico City (with DocsDF this week). 
But never mind about that!  I got to meet the rockumentary king, Julien Temple, who's here for the fest, introducing a few of his films and being a judge of others. 
Ever since I watched the truly terrific Oil City Confidential a year and a half ago (see post), I've been reappraising his work and really it's a good body of work: The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, Absolute Beginners, The Filth and the Fury, Glastonbury, London: the Modern Babylon, and Oil City. And those are just the ones I've seen, and of course there's a huge list of music videos too.  
We chatted about lots of stuff, including 1984 (he shot Sade, Stones, Kinks videos and, most famously, Bowie's 'Jazzin' For Blue Jean'), another film about Wilko Johnson, and he told me about John Lydon turning down the offer for the Sex Pistols to perform 'God Save the Queen' at the London Olympics Opening Ceremony, after the Queen herself had given the OK!  

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