Revolver takes UK rights to Creation Records doc

UK distributor Revolver Entertainment has snapped up UK rights to Upside Down: the Creation Records Story.

The feature doc tells the story of music impresario Alan McGee and the Creation Records label he co-founded. Creation survived against the odds and sometimes prospered from 1983 until around 2000 and nurtured the careers of, among others, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, The Loft, My Bloody Valentine and Oasis.

The film focuses on the friendship between McGee and his former schoolmate, Bobby Gillespie (later of Primal Scream).

“It was a story beyond music,” director Danny O’Connor said recently of what prompted him spend five years making the documentary, which was entirely self-financed. “It is about boys growing up, doing their thing, falling out and winning and losing. That was the attraction… this to me was a very dysfunctional duopoly.”

He describes Upside Down (executive produced by Mark Cranwell) as a very “male” tale - a film about “how we as men are a bit crap at relying on each other”.

McGee is the key voice in the documentary. “But he is not the key component. Without Bobby, he is nothing… the one couldn’t exist without the other.”

O’Connor’s interviewees also include Gillespie, Jim Reid of The Jesus and Mary Chain, Noel Gallagher of Oasis the novelist Irvine Welsh.

“Creation Records sold literally millions of records during its heyday and we are excited to be able to unfurl this fully authorised on-screen biography of its journey from a Glasgow bedroom into the hands of almost every teenager in Britain by 1990,” says Reveolver Entertainment CEO Justin Marciano.

The film is set to hit screens across the UK April/May with a DVD release of the film set for May 9.

The film had its world premirere at the BFI London Film Festival in October.