Natalie

Vapours – Natalie Curtis

VAPOURS (Early Works) is the debut photo book from Natalie Curtis. Spanning a four year post-university period through which she honed her photographic expertise and process. The work is a candid, chronological representation of her diverse personal and professional milieu, captured within environments ostensibly conventional, yet as disconcerting as the array of personalities that the images strive to depict. From band practice rooms in Manchester to the eerie vistas of Los Angeles, via the notorious bullrings of Madrid, this is the powerful and distinctive work from an artist at the very conception of her mode.

 

Get To Know: Natalie Curtis

Natalie Curtis is an emerging conceptual artist and photographer, currently known for her abstract exhibits at Galarie Arnaud in Paris and Recontre Photograhique d’Arles in Arlon Belgium. Both exhibitions include portraits of bands such as Elbow, The Charlatans, Doves and actors Sam Riley, Samantha Morton from the film Control, a rather poignant film for Natalie. If her surname rings a bell it should, she’s the daughter of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis. However word to the wise, don’t ask about him.

Instead, Natalie talks to Hunger TV about her own work, from creating abstract art to sending Chloe Sevigny a Valentines card .

WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO RECENTLY? 

I haven’t been away since the end of last year, but there’s quite a lot going on in Manchester to do with music which I’m involved in. I’m currently listening to a band called Naked On Drugs they’re my favourite, and I am actually doing something with them next month. I also recently did an interesting shoot with SWAY Records, it was for a Valentine’s Day card that they sent out to supporters of the label – it involved naked guys wearing only knitwear and brandishing my horse riding whip and a Samurai sword.

HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE IDEA? 

SWAY had taken some naked photos previously and they tweeted the pictures to me to ask what I thought. So we had a meeting and I thought, fuck it, let’s do a shoot in my flat. I came up with the ideas as we went along, it was all very spontaneous.

DO YOU PLAN YOUR IDEAS IN ADVANCE?

It’s quite often a spur of the moment thing and in this case I was just using the space we had. All they knew was that they wanted to do something where they were naked and the Samurai sword was involved. I started to think it could be used as an interesting Valentine’s Day card so that’s why it was used for that concept. I didn’t want the images to have a comedy effect but to be more serious, it was interesting seeing who we heard back from and who we didn’t.

WHAT WAS THE REACTION TO IT?

People seemed to like it, but then there’re the people we didn’t hear from, so I don’t know what their view was! Inside the card stated ‘Manchester Is Paradise’. We sent one to the actress Chloe Sevigny because she had a really terrible time in Manchester, there were people in Manchester that didn’t like that she had done all these interviews saying how shit it was. Generally we sent cards to people who had bad Manchester experiences just to let them know that it is in fact good again really!

WHO HAVE BEEN SOME OF YOUR FAVOURITE MUSICIANS TO PHOTOGRAPH LATELY? 

Myself and a character called Atrocity Boy who writes a blog – he writes reviews of gigs and I take the photos – have been working together quite closely recently shooting the local Manchester scene. There is a bigger project that we’re working on, the whole concept is that the reviews we do are out of the ordinary, so I made the conscious decision not to do live shots but instead taking photographs inside within a small space. They’re not regular reviews and so I have a lot a freedom and don’t necessarily have to take shots of the bands performing, in fact last time I consciously decided not to. The collaboration has developed into a bigger project that we’re currently working on, and we’ll announce more details soon.

WHY DON’T YOU WANT TO DO LIVE SHOTS?

A lot of the  time I find it quite boring unless it’s a special set of circumstances. I don’t like doing shots for the sake of doing gig shots.

YOU EXHIBITED YOUR CONCEPTUAL WORK AT GALERIE ARNAUD IN PARIS AND ALSO RECONTRE PHOTOGRAPHIQUE D’ARLES IN ARLON BELGIUM- HOW DID THAT COME ABOUT?

Paris was organised by a friend, film producer Michael H Shamberg, he connected lots of people together and so we put on the exhibition for a charity that Michael had set up. And with the Arlon exhibition, the organisers contacted me and I loved my initial ideas. In terms of the pieces I contributed it was all photos performers, but they were in situations the public normally wouldn’t see them in, people in their private spaces. I had pictures of the band Elbow with armchairs on their heads.

DO YOU THINK OF IDEAS FIRST AND THEN DECIDE ON THE MEDIUM OR DO YOU PICK UP THE CAMERA AND LOOK FOR A SUBJECT?

That’s a good question, a bit of both really, I mean sometimes something just happens and it needs photographing while other times I have an idea of something that I want and go about making it happen.

HOW MUCH ARE YOU INFLUENCED BY THE EXTERNAL?

My work is about my environment and what is going on with me so there’s no point thinking about other places because when things are great elsewhere it can be easier to think ‘Oh I should be here or there’, but I don’t think it’s good to get in that mind set when what’s important is around you. I’ve got friends all over the place in other countries, so I am connected to other places, in terms of what generally is going on in the world. I’m not looking at issues head on, but then again I don’t think you can make work that isn’t influenced by what is going on in the world in some way.

WHAT QUESTION ANNOYS YOU THE MOST? 

When people ask me family questions.

TELL US WHAT YOU’RE WORKING ON THIS YEAR?

My website is my next big project, and i feel like I’m going through a transition this year, it’s the first time I’ve really been sure of what I want.

© Hunger TV

She’s in control: Snapper proves she’s more than just Ian Curtis’ daughter with striking photos around Manchester

If you’ve caught the Metrolink from Piccadilly Station recently you may have seen some striking photographs lighting up the underground stop.

They are the work of Manchester photographer Natalie Curtis, who is not only famed for her striking photos but as the daughter of legendary Joy Division singer Ian Curtis.

Natalie wants to bring ‘a remembered dream of summer’ to the autumn commute to cement her status as queen of the underground.

Sways Stills, a collection of black and white photographs documenting a night in the life of Salford-based Sways Records, are the current exhibits in the light boxes studding the backdrop of the Metro station. Natalie took the photos while staying in a Chorlton flat with friends from the independent record label.

In an interview with MM, Natalie said: “Because the light boxes are in a public place, and in particular somewhere that visitors to Manchester might see, it was important to me that I produced photos that relate to Greater Manchester.

“My starting point was to choose a subject that would give a sense of something that’s happening here.

“I didn’t want the images to be a literal take on events, as I’m interested in fictional versions of reality. Although I’ve worked a lot in colour recently, I went with black and white because, as well as thinking it would be more suited to the installation space, I wanted to create something more dream-like; a remembered dream of summer.”

The Sways Stills exhibition came about when Natalie was approached by creative events agency The Hamilton Project, who manage the light boxes on behalf of Transport for Greater Manchester.

“They’d seen my work and thought it was a good fit,” said Natalie.

She has a close relationship with Sways Records after working with Macclesfield rock band Marion during their brief reunion in 2011 and 2012.

“There was an album launch and exhibition at Kraak, and Sways were in attendance. They recruited me Mormon style and did in fact save me as prior to that I was seriously considering leaving Manchester.”

Despite these previous thoughts of leaving the city, Natalie remains inspired by Manchester and its inhabitants.

“It’s a place that can be whatever you want it to be. It’s open and closed,” she said.

While discussing her style Natalie reflects on the role of photographers. “On the one hand I like to document, yet at the same time I don’t aim to provide a strict representation.

“I like to leave room for the viewer to imagine what may or may not have happened. But that’s the nature of photography generally – it’s a version of the truth.”

She shoots in film, and her camera of choice is a Nikon F100. By scanning the negatives and doing the darkroom stage on a computer, she blends old and new technology.

The 34-year-old photographer has been snapping since she was a kid. “I always took photos for fun growing up,” she told MM.

However it was her enrolment on an Art Foundation course at Macclesfield College that she really embraced the photographic medium, and subsequently studied at Manchester Metropolitan University’s School of Art for a BA in photography.

In 2009 Natalie was shortlisted at the Best of Manchester Awards for her intimate photos of bands such as Doves, the Paris Riots and Silversun Pickups, which were displayed at Urbis.

© Judith Hawkins

Natalie Curtis: Fear & Memory

What happens when one British citizen, decides to give a direct response to the ongoing culture of fear perpetuating throughout our times? M.K is a London born and raised arts curator, photographer and writer (The Hollywood Reporter/Rankin’s Hunger tv/Film 3Sixty: The Times),born to a Pakistani ceramic artist mother, she is doing exactly that – by bringing together the established & emerging artists & documenters of our time from the U.K/U.S/Italy/Israel – Palestine and Pakistan, to discuss not why we should be fearful but why we must all be fearless and united – – – As time evolves and as the layers of history have shown, each era has created its own evolution’s and memories.

However the idea of ‘Fear’ is not just exclusive to the field of socio-political areas, nor as the eligere condition, it is something that each person feels within their own context and nuanced life, no matter where they live – and so I ask our leading cultural figures and emerging artists and documenters to pause and reflect, on their own lives, and if we are able to reach an old age, how will we want to recall our lives and memories and therefore, what exactly does it mean to be fearless?

Natalie Curtis is an emerging conceptual artist and photographer, currently known for her abstract exhibits at Galarie Arnaud in Paris and Recontre Photograhique d’Arles in Arlon Belgium. Both exhibitions include portraits of bands such as Elbow, The Charlatans, Doves and actors Sam Riley, Samantha Morton from the film Control, a rather poignant film for Natalie. If her surname rings a bell it should, she’s the daughter of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis.

What are the things that you believe you should be fearless and unapologetic about as an artist of our times?

Natalie Curtis: I think I should not be scared of the kind of work I want to do, it’s difficult because someone is paying you and so you want to fulfill briefs, so it’s finding a way to be yourself and also do the job. The other thing is, recently I’ve been working with people who have given me a lot of freedom, I think that has progressed my work because I’ve been given the freedom to do  whatever I want to do, it has changed everything. So now I think I need to be brave enough to keep on doing things my way, maybe it’s arrogance to think like that, but to hopefully keep meeting like-minded people  who like what I do. It’s so much more fulfilling being given the freedom to do what I want, it’s still within parameters, it doesn’t feel like a job it feels like doing proper  work.

If the aim is to alter or make a difference to people’s thinking about the world or a specific subject, what have you learned so far?

NC: That you have to be honest, having freedom of when to produce work makes it easier to be honest. I never set out to change what people think but if you want people to look at the work and get something from it; I look at the work that means something to me and has changed how I think or has inspired me or has taught me about something, it’s work that was made honestly. The need to earn money can be a trap because you’re trying to earn to buy food and stay warm, but it’s finding the balance but now I have the belief that you can do it your way and still survive.

How do you describe the life you are living now?

NC: Really great actually, better than ever. The quality of my life is really good right now, I’m enjoying living in Manchester, there’re  people from where I grew up that probably say ‘She can’t drive, she doesn’t drink’ but when I have money I spend it on horse riding, I don’t drink but I lead quite  a sociable life. I’m happy with how things are, the fact that one day I could be having a horse riding lesson. So in the last few weeks I’ve assisted on a friends music video shoot, working with people that I’ve worked with before, it’s the brilliant side of the music world, working very hard through the night and the next morning I came home at 7.30 am and the elderly people that saw me, it was like I was doing the walk of shame, walking home at 7.30 am wearing last nights clothes.

What is the current memory you will always want to remember?

NC: I suppose the things that I don’t photograph, it was really great making the visits to Parliament, I tend to forget things once I’ve photographed them, sometimes it’s healthy to not take photographs. It felt like a really good thing to have seen so much of and not photographed it. To just watch something and take it all in, I think it will make my work better, it’ll inform my work in a different way, standing at the dispatch box pretending to be Prime Minister.

 

Natalie Curtis

Natalie Curtis, nasce il 16 aprile 1979 a Manchester, da papà Ian e mamma Deborah. Come per il figlio di Marc Bolan, fino a poco tempo fa, poco o nulla si sapeva della graziosa Natalie. Dopo il passaggio alle scuole di Macclesfield – la Henbury High School ed il Macclesfield College – la figlia dell’indimenticato frontman dei Joy Division si laurea alla Manchester School Art & Design (Metropolitan University) nell’indirizzo fotografico.

Getting to know Dad

The daughter of Ian Curtis, the Joy Division singer who committed suicide 35 years ago, has revealed how images and record sleeves of her father inspired her to become a photographer.

Natalie Curtis was just a one-year-old baby when her father hanged himself at home in Macclesfield. Being so young, she has no direct memories of him.

But she became fascinated with photographs of her dad as she grew older. Images published in 1980s’ weekly music papers, Joy Division record sleeves and other items from the era fired her interest in music, art and design.

Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis took his own life in 1980. He grew up in Macclesfield, attended King’s School and was married in the town, before joining Joy Division.

He was hugely admired by Tony Wilson, the Factory Records boss and Granada TV presenter, who became Joy Division’s number-one champion. The band released two critically acclaimed LPs and four singles, and were on the cusp of major success.

But Ian Curtis suffered from depression and epilepsy, and killed himself just before his 24th birthday and Joy Division’s American tour. His funeral was at Macclesfield Crematorium, where a memorial stone was laid.

Joy Division later reformed as New Order and had massive success. But Ian Curtis remains a key figure in rock music history.

Natalie Curtis grew up with her mother, Deborah, and started taking photographs aged four with her grandma’s camera. But she gradually became intrigued with widely-publicised photographs of her dad.

Now 36, she recalls: “Photographs of Joy Division probably had more effect on me than anything else, especially those by Kevin Cummins and Anton Corbijn.

“Kevin’s pictures were really beautiful. He took some early shots of Joy Division rehearsing. And Anton Corbijn photographed them in a tube station around the same time. Quite a few people photographed Joy Division, but these photographs really stick in my memory.”

Kevin Cummins’ work regularly appeared in NME during the 1970s and Eighties, while Anton Corbijn’s other work included early record sleeves for U2.

Natalie added: “Joy Division sleeves were really cool. One of the best things about Factory Records was its aesthetic design.”

After Henbury High School, she studied at Macclesfield College and in Manchester, and is now developing her photographic career.

A private, modest person, she does not exploit her connection to Ian Curtis. She says she is simply known as ‘Nat the photographer’ to many people.

But she added: “Macclesfield people are more aware that I’m Ian Curtis’s daughter. I was born in Macclesfield and lived there all my life. I grew up with all the publicity surrounding my dad and didn’t really know anything different. That had its ups-and-downs, but I suppose I’ve become used to it.”

“I’m really proud of Joy Division’s music. I think it’s great stuff. And it’s lovely that people are still listening to it. I like lots of Joy Division records myself, especially Closer.”

“I also like dance stuff and country music, like Johnny Cash. But I’m not musical. I tried playing piano as a kid but didn’t make grade-one. I’m really bad,” she quipped.

Natalie currently lives in Manchester but retains strong Macclesfield links, through close friends and photographic projects.

“I love Macclesfield buildings and streets, and the green hills above it.

“I also love places like the 108 steps between the town hall and the railway station.

© Macclesfield Express

A divided joy: seeing my father on film

The new film about Joy Division singer Ian Curtis has been widely acclaimed. His daughter Natalie can see some flaws – but can’t fault the music

 

On a sunny day in August I finally got to see the finished version of Anton Corbijn’s Control, a film about the life of Ian Curtis, my father and lead singer of the band Joy Division.

Ian committed suicide in 1980 at the age of 23, when I had just turned one. I was involved with the project at various stages of production (the film was based on a book written by my mother and Ian’s wife, Deborah, and the two of us visited the set several times) but I had no idea what to expect. For obvious reasons it was strange to watch. In addition to the weirdness of seeing my family made fiction, I found myself distracted by my own memories; not just of things I have been told about my father and events, but of my time on set. In view of such a surreal experience I am perhaps not the best person to write about Control, and what follows is not a review.

It’s hard for me to comment on Sam Riley’s performance as my father. Watching the character of Ian is different to watching the other characters in the film, as I only ever see Ian on screen, and I only know his voice through recordings. It is very odd for me to hear everyone say how much Sam looks like Ian. Sure, he’s got the hair and clothes, but I look like Ian, and Sam looks nothing like me! Sam’s voice sounds great in the film, but it is not the voice of my father and it makes me feel awkward people saying that Sam sounds ‘just like him’.

I must say that I do really rate Sam’s epileptic fits. Of course I have never seen footage of my father having a seizure, but what is shown in the film is convincing enough to make for uncomfortable viewing. It would have been easy to get the epilepsy stuff wrong, but it is handled with sensitivity.

I like that the film does show a human side to the band and, in particular, the way the roadies take care of Ian. I felt real empathy for Rob Gretton, the band’s manager, too, as played by the excellent Toby Kebbell. The character of Rob provides Control’s humour, so you feel it more when Rob is placed in a difficult position. Samantha Morton, as Deborah, is also very powerful – there are scenes that may have been dreary if not for her passion.

My main criticism of the film is that it doesn’t go far enough to convey my father’s mental health problems: his depression and mood swings are simply not addressed. Given the fervour to discover why he killed himself, this is something of an oversight. Yet the fun stuff, the laughs and japes are also absent. The scenes featuring Annik, Ian’s Belgian girlfriend, are inadequate, because they don’t show how important such companionship would have been for this lonely, ill man. Annik wasn’t excluded from Joy Division in the way my mother was, but she wasn’t exactly welcomed either, and that male world of the band on tour is barely touched on.

In recent years much has been made of the notion that Ian’s biggest problem was the women in his life, when in fact his inability to deal with his relationships, not to mention everything else, was a symptom of his depressive illness. Sadly, the film does little to show this, or how these two women were more aware than anyone of how ill Ian actually was and how hard they tried to help him.

Deborah and Annik are lucky as they are at least played by talented actors. Ultimately the character portrayed with the least satisfaction is the city of Manchester. I don’t mean specific locations, but the look of the film in general. Where are the dark, empty streets, the Manchester of the Seventies, evoked by the lyrics and music of Joy Division? I don’t expect the film to be a history lesson but its glossiness is disappointing. How can an audience understand Joy Division without understanding its environment?

Many Mancunians were suspicious from the start: what do Hollywood producers and a Dutchman (who moved to the UK because of Joy Division, but chose to live in London) know about this city of ours? It could be worse – thanks to Salford screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh and the input of all those close to Ian, this story of Macclesfield, Salford and Manchester has not been totally hijacked by outsiders.

Whatever my mixed feelings about this film, it holds some powerful pleasures for me: the live performances. Not only do the band look great, their hair and clothes spot on, but they sound like the real thing too. They learned to play their instruments and the songs in the space of a week, and I can’t help but be in awe of them for that.

Perhaps I’ve made the film sound terrible when it isn’t. After all, this is personal for me: I feel protective of my father, that boy who is younger than me. I have to remember that it’s not a documentary, it’s just a story – even if it is a different story to the one I’ve grown up hearing from those who were there at the time. However the film is received, those songs remind me that the most important thing is and always will be the music.

© Natalie Curtis & The Guardian

On the set of Control

How does it feel to watch the life and death of your father being re-enacted on film? Natalie Curtis, daughter of the late Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, went on the set of director Anton Corbijn’s Control, camera in hand, to find out

‘Suddenly the reality hit me’

I was about three when my mum first told me that my father, Ian Curtis – who died when I was one – was a singer, but it just seemed normal, like having an uncle who was a tradesman or whatever. I remember hearing Love Will Tear Us Apart on the radio and realising he was known in some way, but I never thought of him as famous. When I was growing up, neither myself nor my mother were in the public eye, and Joy Division were more cult than mainstream. The first time I heard their album Closer, I thought it was out of this world. I assumed all music was done with that level of style and intelligence. As I grew older, it was a shock to discover not everything was that amazing.

Initially I was dead against visiting the set of Control, the film about my father’s life directed by photographer Anton Corbijn. Although it took my mother’s memoir, Touching From A Distance, as a starting point, books are read in private, whereas a film is something much more public, an experience shared with an audience. When filming began in Macclesfield, I declined the opportunity to go. Macclesfield was somewhere I’d always associated with lush, green, rolling hills and I didn’t want to associate it with a film about my father’s suicide. Gradually my curiosity got the better of me, though; after all, I did study photography and am interested in film. Also, I felt that seeing the process would make it easier to watch the finished thing.

In July 2006 I went to Nottingham, where most of the film was being shot. I was on edge. It felt too weird. A bungalow had been given a 70s makeover to recreate my parents’ engagement party. Of course, I’ve no idea how realistic it was, because I wasn’t born. I first met Sam Riley, who plays my father, outside the bungalow. Sam looked really sweet with his 70s Ian haircut; as it was the pre-band Ian he was playing, he wasn’t the Ian Curtis we all imagine. He felt a bit awkward at first, I think. But I had a sneaky cigarette with him, so when I saw that scene where Ian says, “You can’t be in my gang if you don’t smoke!” I couldn’t help but giggle.

In between scenes, I was introduced to Samantha Morton, who plays my mother. Later that night we got a call to come along to a restaurant in some dark, trendy club, and afterwards we went to the flat where Samantha was staying with her fiancé. She held my hand as we crossed the road, just like my mum used to do when I was younger – I think the cast saw me as the baby of the set, because I am the baby in the film. Samantha didn’t have on the Debbie wig when we met, but we talked until dawn about her role and I saw her notes – thoughts and reflections on how to play the character. She’d made them from my mum’s book, but also from her own experiences as a mother. She had her daughter at a similar age to my mother when she had me. She also had a “Debbie playlist” – songs my mother would have listened to in 1980, such as Bowie and Durutti Column’s Sketch For Summer, one of my own favourites. Every day before filming, Samantha would listen to the music to psych herself into character. Spending time with her had reassured me; I knew that whatever happened she’d do a damned good job, even if she didn’t seem quite like my mother. Both she and Sam are in their late 20s playing my parents in their teens and early 20s, so they seem older. I think the film has made Mum slightly dowdier, too – I certainly don’t remember her wearing such awful clothes.

It felt odder when they started filming the band scenes in a Nottingham pub that was supposed to be Rafters in Manchester, where Joy Division played. I’ve grown up with black-and-white photos of the band – probably what attracted me to become a photographer – but suddenly they were there in front of me in colour, in 3-D and uncannily accurate. Harry Treadaway – who plays drummer Steve Morris – had previously played guitar, but none of the others had played instruments before. They obviously worked hard at getting everything spot-on. Harry took me to lunch and told me he’d perfected his Macc accent by recording local lads in a bicycle shop. The “pretend Joy Division” even had banter and in-jokes like a real group, and called each other by their characters’ names: Barney, Steve, Ian and Hooky.

We talked a lot about their roles; they were particularly interested in some research I’d done for the writer, Matt Greenhalgh. My father was diagnosed with epilepsy in January 1979, and looking into this for Matt gave me a real understanding of what he was going through at the time. There was more of a stigma attached to being epileptic then and people were a lot less well informed. My father also suffered from mood swings and depression. You read about mental health services being cut now, but God knows what it must have been like in the late 70s. There were loads of side-effects to his medication. It’s likely that the epilepsy and the medication would have exacerbated the depression, although there was no provision for dealing with this.

People constantly ask, “Why did he kill himself?” To me it seems obvious – because he was really depressed. Bernard [Sumner, Joy Division guitarist] told me that my father used to drink before performing, which may explain his on-stage fits, because alcohol is a seizure trigger. Seizures can also be triggered by flashing lights, lack of sleep and stress. Ian’s lifestyle and the tension caused by the disintegration of his marriage would not have helped. He did the best he could; he was just very ill.

I’ve never really felt angry at my father for committing suicide, nor was I emotional about it all being brought up in the film because it’s been there every day for me, although I’ve not had a tortured life.

We had a lot of laughs on set, in the same way as Mum told me how there was always mischief around the band. One of my favourite moments was being an extra at the Bury riot gig scene of 1980. It felt strange shouting, “Fuck off!” at a pretend Alan Hempsall, the Crispy Ambulance singer who stood in for my father when he was too ill to go on stage, because I’d interviewed the real one in my research. I got caught up in the skinheads’ fight and had a bruise on my foot for a month. The Strawberry Studios scene was special for me because I helped Harry discover how they made the famous drum sound in She’s Lost Control. He explained that that “crrch crrch” sound was a combination of a syn drum and the sound of tape head cleaner being sprayed. It was a strange afternoon. Everyone was happy when it was all over, but I cried. Joy Division is not something that will ever go away for me.

At the wrap party it was interesting to watch the actors, who had felt like a real band to me, suddenly shaking off their characters. We were shown some rushes and the reality behind it suddenly hit me. There was a baby scene I found especially upsetting; everyone cheered and said, “That’s you.” I drank more than I normally would that night.

It was hard to watch the finished film, but it is just a film, after all. Toby Kebbell – who plays Joy Division manager Rob Gretton – is one of my favourites, but he’s not how Rob was. Rob was always around, but in the last year of his life I worked in a nearby office and got to know him much better; he was so gentle and wise. I never heard Rob swear like he does in the film and there’s a bit where he’s mean to Alan Hempsall. Rob would never have been like that. I don’t think the film captures how lovable Tony Wilson – the Factory Records boss who used his life savings to fund Joy Division’s debut – was either. However, my mother and I agree with what Tony once said: if it is a choice between the truth and the legend, take the legend every time.

I miss Tony terribly and remember him arriving on set with his mad Weimaraner William bounding on to a scene and someone yelling, “Cut!!!” Four days after I saw the finished film, Tony died of cancer. So, a year after hanging out on set with a pretend Steve and a pretend Hooky, I caught up with the real ones, not at a glitzy film premiere but at a funeral.

I have mixed feelings about the film – I feel so excited for the band and the music, but repulsed by the idea of people watching a film about my family. It’s probably the same for all those left behind. The band must have been very excited when the film got an ovation at Cannes, but it can’t be comfortable watching people be very happy about sad things in your life. I felt sad reading recently that they said they feel guilty; but if anyone let Ian Curtis down, it was the NHS, not musicians too young to help.

Tony never got to see the film, but for me it is for him. It feels like Joy Division are finally going from being an enormous cult to a household name – just as Tony always believed they should.

© Natalie Curtis & The Guardian