24 Hour Party People

Manchester 1976. Only a handful of people showed up to a certain early Sex Pistols concert, but the impact of their new style of music was phenomenal. The fans who were present felt the influence of this indescribable experience for the rest of their lives. It began a new chapter in the history of music. Television moderator Tony Wilson found himself at the forefront of the Manchester music scene and he immediately started up the now legendary Factory Records. He signed a contract with Joy Division in his own blood, and the band went on to make a splash with their debut album Unknown Pleasure featuring the hit single "Love Will Tear Us Apart." When in 1980 lead singer Ian Curtis committed suicide, the rest of the band carried on under the new name New Order. Three years later the band came out with Blue Monday whose cover was so costly that the publishing house lost five pence on every copy sold. In spite of this, the single became the most successful twelve-inch of all time. Also at the beginning of the eighties, Tony Wilson opened a dance club, the celebrated Hacienda, site of another musical revolution which swept the band off the stage and installed a DJ in its place. But before this he managed to introduce Happy Mondays to the world, and dance music made its mark on the hit parade. Director Michael Winterbottom created this black comedy, covering over twenty years of music, drugs and sex, as a fictional feature-length documentary in which acted sequences combine with archive footage.