The best Tony Wilson’s music movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Tony Wilson’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Tony Wilson.
24 Hour Party People
7.3/10
Manchester, 1976. Tony Wilson is an ambitious but frustrated local TV news reporter looking for a way to make his mark. After witnessing a life-changing concert by a band known as the Sex Pistols, he persuades his station to televise one of their performances, and soon Manchester's punk groups are clamoring for him to manage them. Riding the wave of a musical revolution, Wilson and his friends create the legendary Factory Records label and The Hacienda club.
The 90s: Ten Years That Changed the World
8.6/10
Documentary that outlines the 1990s and the decade the changed the world.
Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché
7.1/10
The death of punk icon and X-Ray Spex front-woman Poly Styrene sends her daughter on a journey through her mother's archives in this intimate documentary.
Factory: Manchester from Joy Division to Happy Mondays
8.2/10
Documentary celebrating the triumph, tragedy and human comedy that was Manchester record company, Factory. Started by the late Tony Wilson, Alan Erasmus, Peter Saville and Martin Hannett in the late 1970s, it became known as the home of Joy Divsion, New Order and Happy Mondays and for creating the Hacienda club. The label pioneered Britain's independent pop culture, creating a new Manchester and blowing a shed-load of money. Includes interviews with all the main players in the Factory story.
New Order: Decades
6.7/10
Part concert, part documentary, this film follows the band’s preparations in the re-staging of their acclaimed collaboration So It Goes.. with the artist Liam Gillick and the 12-piece synthesiser orchestra that spectacularly captured the headlines during Manchester International Festival 2017.
The Smiths: The Queen Is Dead - A Classic Album Under Review
8.2/10
Showing for the first time how it all came together and what made it so great, the film is all at once hugely enlightening, downright entertaining, and remains the only visual document of this momentous happening ever released. - Written by Clint Weiler
Factory: Play At Home
A short film made in 1984 by the band New Order which sees them interview the personnel behind their record label Factory, including Tony Wilson, Martin Hannett, Rob Gretton, Alan Erasmus, and Peter Saville amongst others. It also includes three live performances of New Order at the Haçienda.
New Order - Pumped Full of Drugs
New Order filmed live in concert in Tokyo, May 2nd 1985
Music Maker: Rory Gallagher
Director Bill Keating built a programme around following Rory through a day of his short 1972 Irish tour. At the center of the programme is a recording of the concert Rory played in the Savoy Cinema in Limerick on May 11th 1972.
