Words: Billy Chainsaw

Okay, we know some of you would rather gouge out your eyes than watch a documentary about Depeche Mode fans. However, if you did that, you’d not only be doing yourself damage but also missing out on a truly infectious viewing experience. Brit filmmakers Nicholas Abrahams and Jeremy Deller’s The Posters Came from the Walls is a passionate, poignant and extremely entertaining celebration of how worshipping a band can end up being both a life changing and a life saving experience.

We’re not talking about your average loner that pines in his/her bedsit hanging on Morrissey’s every word. No, these are kids who live in such countries as Russia, Romania and Iran, where open adulation of a rock band and daring to be different means putting your life on the line with the authorities. It’s like a flashback to the UK circa ’77, when public punk beatings swept the nation, turning even Johnny Rotten into a victim – attacked in the street by an outraged mob with blades and a broken bottle.

Granted, there’s no denying that the sight of countless huddles of Dave Gahan and Martin Gore dead-ringers is Children of the Damned creepy, but what Abrahams and Deller’s documentary gloriously reveals is how the unifying power of fandom is not something to be scoffed at.

SCREENINGS

Special preview on Tuesday December 1st, film screening at 6.30pm at all the following venues – please check with individual venues in case of any schedule changes:

Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge

Belmont, Aberdeen

Cameo, Edinburgh

Cinema City, Norwich

Electric, Birmingham

Exeter Picturehouse

FACT, Liverpool

Greenwich Picturehouse

Harbour Lights, Southampton

Hyde Park, Leeds

Phoenix, Oxford

Ritzy, Brixton

The Little, Bath

York Picturehouse

Also screening in Tyneside on December 3rd, screen to be announced!