You can almost literally taste the grime. Unlike Control, it has been shot in colour, as is most of the used archive footage from the times, but the opening sequence wonderfully captures the environment in which Joy Division were born: crumbling high-rise flats, constant demolition, open sewers, the overpowering sense of greyness, from the skies to the endless crumbling shopfronts. Deborah has never even shown the second one to the band, which Hook confesses he finds 'awfully tantalising'. During questions from the floor, Hook reveals that the suicide note quoted in Control ('No need to fight now') is genuine but that it's actually the one from Ian Curtis's first - failed - suicide attempt. He describes the documentary as 'the perfect answer to Control'. Hooky suggests that the docu-makers had a special insight because of the timing - the band members' contributions were filmed before they were exhausted from assisting with Control. Hook chortles: 'That would have been a sight.' More typically/seriously, Savage compares Joy Division to 'distilled emotion' and speaks movingly of how scripting the film - featuring deceased friends Ian Curtis, Rob Gretton, Martin Hannett and Tony Wilson - had been very emotional for him. Savage professes himself so delighted with the documentary that watching it makes him 'feel like dancing'.

Although unintentional, it quickly becomes apparent that Hook and Savage make an unlikely comic duo. Well, at the documentary's first British screening, at Sheffield's Showroom cinema, it offers a panel including Savage, various producers, director Grant Gee (who did the Radiohead film, Meeting People is Easy) and JD bassist Peter Hook. But with so much about Joy Division now in the public domain, what can a 90-minute documentary have to offer that Control - or Ian Curtis's widow Deborah's book-exposé Touching From a Distance, with which Savage was involved - possibly have to offer? Hot on the heels of Anton Corbijn's masterful Control, comes Joy Division, the documentary, written by author and original Joy Division fan/friend Jon Savage, a factual account of events of almost three decades ago. Photograph: Rex FeaturesĪs Peter Hook puts it, 'You wait 30 years and two come along at once.' He's talking about films about Manchester's finest, Joy Division. Two full days after seeing Joy Division, the documentary, it's difficult to shake off the feeling that this story is ongoing, in all of us.

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