Film > 24 Hour Party People
24 Hour Party People is an accomplished, affectionate and thoroughly entertaining,account of the Manchester music scene beginning with The Sex Pistols' first gig in the city in 1976 and ending with the closure of the Hagienda in 1992. Out of a depressed city and out of the wasteland of early '70s pop music rose an energetic, angry, proud and euphoric music scene which evolved and snowballed overiwo decades. Somewhere between telling a raw story of chaos and pragmatism and celebrating the same story's mythification through our pop collective memory, this film transports you through time and space.
In this colourful, emotionally charged journey through bygone eras you will encounter iconic landmarks: the dark, post-punk pioneers Joy Division; the latter's reincarnation as godfathers of dance music New Order; The Happy Mondays, vanguards of the Madchester cult; and the birth of acid house at the Hacienda, a venue which was not only a legend but an original of its kind.
At the heart of it all was Factory Records, a romantic independent label which shunned formalities such as contracts and upheld total artistic freedom as the absolute value. Factory's vision was ultimately unsustainable when faced with the realities of business. After incurring insurmountable debts and losing the Hacienda to gang violence the label went into receivership in 1992, the year acid house died. The rise and fall of Factory Records depicted in this film is a classic tale of the co-operative ideal and the ethos of freedom corrupted by human nature. Factory's achievement in turning Manchester into an era-defining epicentre of music despite overthrowing the conventions and common sense of business, or in part because of it, is the stuff of legends.
- extract from Curzon Soho film notes