Like buses, you get no films at all about the sad demise of Joy Division, and then two good ones come along at once.

Manchester indie music darlings Joy Division hit the big time in the Eighties, producing two seminal albums Unknown Pleasures and Closer before Ian Curtis, suffering personal anguish and finding it difficult to cope with epilepsy, took his life following a failed suicide attempt which seemingly others paid not enough heed to.

Many may have seen the bio-pic Control not long ago which was a vivid recreation of Ian Curtis's life based on the book by his wife Deborah Curtis called 'Touching the Distance'.

Joy Division the film documentary is a different kettle of fish - it allows band members Bernard Albrecht, Stephen Morris and Peter Hook, to give generously candid interviews, together with informed comments from the late Factory Records boss Tony Wilson, graphic artist Peter Saville and Control director Anton Corbijn.

Directed by Grant Cee (Meeting People is Easy- Radiohead Documentary) 'Joy Division' examines the band's story as depicted through never-before-seen live performance footage, personal photos, period films and newly discovered audiotapes.

The film starts with the band's early days, suggesting that where the band members grew up had an influence on their music whilst also showing rare footage of Joy Division's early sound as a punk band under their initial name of Warsaw.

Director Grant Gee succeeds in showing the divisions in the band between those who enjoyed larking about (Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, 'we used to ride pigs for fun') and the intellectuals (such as Ian and Annik) who read books, and were inspired by art and other influences. This is not more evident than when the band were based in London and occupied two flats based on those principles.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable sequences in this warm documentary, is Bernard's admission that he once tried to regress Ian in an hypnotic trance to a former life, in a bid to unlock anything that was troubling him. It's an astonishing five minutes backed up by an audio recording to give it fascinating credence.

One thing that is also different to 'Control', is the presence of Ian's Belgian mistress Annik who Ian was seeing even though he was married to Deborah.

It's interesting to hear Annik's comments and see how she coped after he'd gone (Tony Wilson kept her company and she played both albums virtually back to back for a good few days). It's Annik too, who reminded them afterwards that Ian's lyrics for the album 'Closer' were sadly prophetic of what was to come.

I was also moved by Peter Hook's reaction. He's full of wisecracks throughout, but in the last part of the film, acknowledges that one of his biggest regrets was not paying his respects to Ian after he died.

It's a definitive tribute to the band and well worth seeing, a good companion piece to Control and the better of the two films merely because it offers more insights and goes further in that Control drifts away after Ian's death whereas Joy Division goes on to show how the band members coped with the news and what followed after that.