The production team behind the Senna and Amy feature documentaries have turned their attention to one of Manchester's iconic bands and will look back on their early years - and they're asking friends and family of the Gallagher brothers for help.
Makers of an Oasis documentary that features new interviews with both Noel and Liam Gallagher, are reaching out to friends and fans of the band for rare archive material to help tell the group’s story.
Oasis - The Rock ’N’ Roll Band That Defined A Generation will chart the band’s history from their childhood in Burnage and through their early gigs up to the shows that defined them: Knebworth, in 1996, in front of quarter of a million fans over two nights.
The producers - the team behind acclaimed documentaries Senna and Amy - are not only keen to paint a picture of the band’s lives together but also of the community they grew up in.
And in particular they’re asking people to poke around in their attics and cupboards for any home movies of the boys in a school nativity play, which mum Peggy Gallagher fondly recalls.
The Mat Whitecross feature documentary, which will be released to cinemas in 2016, is produced by James Gay Rees (Senna/Amy), Fiona Neilson (Spike Island), and Simon Halfon (Sleuth), with executive producer Asif Kapadia (Senna/Amy).
It is entirely made up of archive material and though the band do not appear on screen they and their former management have been interviewed about this formative period.
After Knebworth, Oasis became international superstars, but the film hopes to paint the Gallaghers as lads shaped by the Irish community and the city they grew up in.
Researchers are now on the look out for personal photographs and film footage of the band’s childhood and back stage at early Manchester gigs, as well as pictures and memorabilia from their Maine Road shows just months before Knebworth.
They are also calling out to the Manchester Irish community for home movies that show what life was like for young people in Burnage when the Gallaghers were children - including christenings and school plays.
They need submissions in by early January and will return all items, as well as pay to use rare footage. All material can be sent to researcher Hannah Green on hannah.oasisfilm@gmail.com.
Hannah said: “The film will be about those early years, about the foundations of the band up to them hitting the big time in 1996.
“We want to set the whole scene of where the Gallaghers come from: their Irish background, the football games they played, the bands they were in.
“We don’t have much from their period as The Rain (before Noel joined Oasis), so we would particularly like to have photos or tickets from that time.”
Source: www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk
