Suede are delighted to announce that the band are the subject of a major new definitive feature-documentary.‘Suede: The Insatiable Ones’ was commissioned by Sky Arts, produced by ChristieHQ, and is a Sky Arts and BMG Films co-production.
Set to premiere on 24th November at 9pm on Sky Arts, the film was conceived by the acclaimed director Mike Christie. Christie’s film-making career actually began while working with Suede, after meeting them during the band’s 1993 collaboration with Derek Jarman. His recent work includes the music feature Hansa Studios: By The Wall 1976-90 and the forthcoming film New Order: Decades.
Speaking about how Suede: The Insatiable Ones came together, Christie explains:
“One of many things I’ve learned in two decades of documentary making is that some stories can’t be told until they’re ready to be told. We’d debated making a film before but this time was absolutely the right time. This is a band who are once again at the peak of their artistic powers and only now in the right place to reflect deeply on their lives, past and work with brutal honesty. And coupled with the extraordinarily extensive video archive of drummer Simon Gilbert, we don’t just hear about the intense highs and lows – we see them…”
Suede: The Insatiable Ones arrives 25 years after the release of their monumental first album Suede, and in the wake of their brilliant new opus The Blue Hour, set for release on 21st September.
The film, for which there will be a premiere in London on 20th November, was made with full access to the band and their extensive personal archives, helping to tell the story with unprecedented insight. Pulling no punches, the documentary explores the highs and lows of Suede’s career – their roots and identity, the media frenzy that surrounded their first album, as well as the subsequent, infamous tensions that led to a major split within the group. Also explored are the international, critical and commercial achievements enjoyed by their reinvented line up with the 1996 album Coming Up, the impact of that success and subsequent excess, and ultimately their 2003 split and recent acclaimed rebirth.
Brett Anderson, Mat Osman, Simon Gilbert, Richard Oakes and Neil Codling are joined in the film by an eclectic cast that includes former band members Justine Frischmann and ex-Smith Mike Joyce. Also present are Ricky Gervais, part of their early management team, as well as family, friends and collaborators, including Richard Osman, legendary art director Peter Saville, Nude founder Saul Galpern, and producer Ed Buller.
Speaking about the film, Suede’s Brett Anderson adds:
“There is no one better placed to make the definitive Suede film than Mike Christie. He’s been there with us almost from day one, pointing a damned camera in our faces. This isn’t a powder-puff promotional tool, it’s a film that grasps at the very essence of what the band is, charting the scruffy inglorious years of struggle, the vertiginous heights of success and the dank depths of self-destruction and hopefully emerges at the end of it all with some truths revealed and some myths destroyed”.
