Julien Temple

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Julien Temple is a British film, documentary and music video director. He was born in London in 1953.

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Biography

Image:Greatrock500uk.jpg Temple grew up with little interest in film until he discovered the works of director Jean Vigo when he was a student at King's College, Cambridge. This discovery along with discovering the early punk scene in London in 1976 led to his friendship with The Sex Pistols, and he began to document many of their early gigs. His first film was a short documentary called Sex Pistols Number 1, which set out to show the rise of the band from 1976-1977 in a series of short clips from television interviews and gigs.

This led to Temple making The Great Rock And Roll Swindle, a documentary telling the story of the band from the viewpoint of their manager Malcolm McLaren as band members Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious had left. The film told of the rise of the band as apparently manipulated by McLaren and how he had shaped the band throughout their short career. Much of the 'facts' given by McLaren were disputed by John Lydon (who had dropped the Johnny Rotten name after leaving the band), who accused McLaren of using the film to attack him personally. This helped split opinion on the film as although it was praised for attempting to capture some of the punk scene of the time, it was seen as too skewed towards McLaren's vision.

This controversy aside, Temple was praised for his mix of animated scenes, documentary footage, and specially shot footage which he used to tell McLaren's story. This helped launch Temple into a career making music videos, something he would be best known for much of his career. Temple's next theatrical release was the short film Jazzin' for Blue Jean featuring David Bowie which was released as a support feature to Company of Wolves. By 1985 Temple was now well known for being a director of successful music videos but had not yet directed a major film.

In 1986 he had the offer to direct the film version of Colin MacInnes' book Absolute Beginners by Steven Woolley of Goldcrest Productions. Absolute Beginners was one of the most expensive films in British history and the fate of the studios involved (as well as several careers) were riding on the succuss of the film. The film was a musical and not a straight adaptation of the book and this led to the film being heavily criticised for a lack of narrative, as well as being called a serious of badly linked music videos. The film was critically panned in the UK and was a massive commercial flop which resulted in Goldcrest going bankrupt and the British film industry entering a period of decline. Temple found himself being blamed personally for the failure but the film proved to have a small following in the United States. This led to Temple being offered the film Earth Girls Are Easy as well as a series of music videos for such artists as Janet Jackson.

Temple made America his home after this for much of the next few years but returned to the UK in 1the late 1990s to make a series of films as well as continuing to make music videos. These films included Pandæmonium, a critically acclaimed 2001 film about the friendship between Romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, and The Filth and the Fury, another documentary about The Sex Pistols. This time the film was made with the full coperation of the surviving members of the band and told the story of the band from their viewpoint. This film also mixed newly shot footage and interviews as well as footage culled from The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, as well as prevously unseen interviews. The film was a critical success and was seen as setting the record straight in regard to the history of The Sex Pistols.

Since 2002 Temple has been working on a feature length documentary about the Glastonbury Festival. This has involved him shooting footage at the festival from 2002 to 2005, as well as drawing on the vast amount of archive footage as well as footage sent in by fans of the festival. The film was released in the UK in April 2006.

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Filmography

His film work includes:

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Music videos

His music video work includes:

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External links

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