EVERYWHERE - Poseurs: watching the No City Fun Joy Division film
A while back I did a blog about Grant Gee's 2007 Joy Division documentary mentioning that, good as it is (up to a point), Gee's film needed to be more like Charles E Salem's scratchy, scuffed-up 12-minute short on the band and Manchester, No City Fun (1979). I don't think No City Fun was widely available until fairly recently, but it is now (on YouTube as of October 2022). Manchester moderne: a shot from No City Fun So, what's No Fun City like? Well, for me it's like this: *It's pretty much the ideal film to "represent" a band and their music. In essence it's like an elongated music video, though quite a lot more abstract and impressionistic than your average music vid. There are no cheesy shots of Joy Division in the street or pretending to play their instruments (they don't appear at all). What we see is Manchester, Manchester, Manchester: the city centre, forlorn-looking housing estates and arterial roads, the Hulme Crescents, car p...
