Julien Temple

Temple made a series of films in the late 1990s including Vigo (1998), a story of the passionate relationship between Jean Vigo and his wife Lydou, and Pandæmonium (2000), a critically acclaimed film about the friendship between Romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth which won the Evening Standard Film Best Actor award for Linus Roache.

Then in 2000 Temple revisited the story of The Sex Pistols in The Filth and the Fury, an account of their history, this time from the viewpoint and with full cooperation of the surviving members of the band.  Seen as setting the record straight, the film was critically acclaimed and embraced by the public.

In 2002 Temple started the feature length documentary Glastonbury, a vivid and personal chronicle of thirty years of the music festival. Temple shot the film over 4 years at the festival between 2002 and 2005, drawing on a vast amount of archive, as well as the footage sent in by fans of the festival and was released in April 2006.

The Future Is Unwritten, a film celebrating the life and times of his close friend Joe Strummer, punk warlord and leader of The Clash, followed. Another trademark montage film with archive, original material and animation it premiered at Sundance in 2007 and won the British Independent Film award for best documentary.

In 2008 Temple went back to the influences of Aria when he directed Eternity Man, a narrative opera film for Channel 4, ABC and Australian Opera, winning the Golden Rose award at Montreux 2009 and Silver Medal at the New York Television awards.

His most recent films include Oil City Confidential a documentary about the forgotten precursors of punk, Dr Feelgood, which won the main prize at the 2009 Turin Film Festival, The Liberty of Norton Folgate a conceptual live performance by Madness, There’ll Always Be An England  which documented the Sex Pistols reunion concerts, and Find the Torch a television film about Paul Weller for C4.

Temple’s 2010 Requiem For Detroit? was his first film with a city as the focus and won the Grierson Award for Best Historical Documentary, whilst that same year his Imaginary Man for Alan Yentob at BBC, a biography of long term collaborator and Kinks songwriter Ray Davies, screened on Christmas Eve at prime time on BBC 1.

The following year started with another music documentary for the BBC, Kinkdom Come, switching his focus to Ray’s brother, Dave Davies. This was soon followed by Glastopia, a second film on the Glastonbury Festival, spotlighting the alternative arts and late night performers at the festival. Glastopia was premiered in place of the festival, which was on a hiatus, in June 2012.

In early 2011 Temple began work on his latest project, the immense London – The Modern Babylon, backed by the BFI and BBC. This widely acclaimed feature documentary was released theatrically in the UK in August 2012, launching internationally at the Toronto Film festival in September.

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Julien Temple continues to make videos for the likes of Ray Davies, Pete Doherty and a posthumous Jimi Hendrix release, and is currently working with legendary producer Jeremy Thomas on You Really Got Me, the story of the intense love/hate relationship between brothers Ray and Dave Davies, which fuelled the creative force behind the legendary British band The Kinks. 

While hoping to save his Marvin Gaye movie from a premature, financial death he’s also working simultaneously on Rio 50º/Carry on Carioca, a favela flavoured X-ray of the soul of the playtime/gun capital and future olympic city of the Americas.