Joy Division: Performances From Control

Monday, May 18, 2009

Joy Division: Performances From Control

Control is a 2007 black-and-white biopic film about Ian Curtis (1956–1980), lead singer of post-punk band Joy Division. The screenplay written by Matt Greenhalgh is based on the book Touching from a Distance, by Curtis's widow, Deborah, who is also a co-producer of the film. The film was directed by Dutch director Anton Corbijn. In the film, Ian Curtis is played by previously little-known actor Sam Riley. Samantha Morton plays Deborah, while Alexandra Maria Lara plays Annik, the woman with whom Curtis had an extramarital affair.

The film details the life of the troubled young musician, who forged a new kind of music out of the punk rock scene of the United Kingdom in the 1970s, and the band Joy Division, which he headed from 1977 to 1980. It also deals with his rocky marriage and extramarital affairs, as well as his increasingly frequent seizures, which were thought to contribute to the circumstances leading to his suicide on the eve of Joy Division's first U.S. tour. The title is a reference to the Joy Division song, "She's Lost Control"—believed to be a reference to an epileptic client befriended by Curtis while employed at a Job Centre in Macclesfield, who later died during a seizure.

joy Division - Disorder from Uknkown Pleasures album
[bxA]