Julien Temple

Biography

Julien Temple (born London, 1953) is a British director of documentaries, feature films and music videos. He is closely associated with the London punk scene of the late 1970s and has built a long career in music video, a field in which he has been a leading figure since the 1980s.

Temple studied in London and at King's College, Cambridge, where he discovered the work of the French anarchist filmmaker Jean Vigo. His interest in punk led him to document the Sex Pistols from their early gigs onward. His first projects were short films and documentaries about the band, and in 1980 he released The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, told from the viewpoint of their manager, Malcolm McLaren. Mixing animation, archive footage and newly shot scenes, it brought him attention, though critics said it leaned too far towards McLaren's version of events.

That success opened the way to feature films, after years of directing videos for The Kinks, The Rolling Stones and David Bowie. In 1986 he made Absolute Beginners, an expensive musical that failed at the box office and with critics and helped bring about the collapse of Goldcrest Films. Temple took much of the blame, moved to the United States and made Earth Girls Are Easy, while also directing videos for Janet Jackson, Neil Young and Tom Petty.

He returned to Britain in the late 1990s and directed Vigo: Passion for Life, which was poorly received. In the 2000s he went back to the Sex Pistols with The Filth and the Fury, made with the cooperation of the surviving members, and completed a feature-length documentary about the Glastonbury Festival. He has since continued with music documentaries such as Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten and Ray Davies: Imaginary Man.

His legacy lies mainly in music documentary and the music video, where he combines archive material, fiction and animation. His recent output includes work on British punk and rock, while his Marvin Gaye biopic, Sexual Healing, was halted during production by financial problems.

Key films

• Absolute Beginners (1986): his move into features, an expensive musical that failed commercially.
• Earth Girls Are Easy (1988): a musical comedy shot in the United States after the British setback.
• Aria (1987): he directed the Rigoletto segment of the anthology film about opera.
• Bullet (1996): an action thriller showing his work in genre cinema.
• The Filth and the Fury (2000): a documentary on the Sex Pistols made with the cooperation of the band.