The demise of disco was greatly accelerated by the cultural impact of the infamous Disco Demolition Night of 1979 in Chicago’s Comiskey Park. While rockers have used the word in a pejorative sense for years, DJs, artists, impresarios, and aficionados know that disco—both the genre and the subculture—not only has deep roots but has lived on under various aliases, inspiring the evolution of music and keeping people moving in various funky ways. Le freak, c’est toujours chic!
These are the ideas, plot points and storylines that Toronto filmmakers Omar Majeed (“Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam”) and Peter Mishara explore in their documentary feature “Disco’s Revenge,” which had its world premiere Thursday in Hot Docs’ Pop/Life strand.
The film, which screens again Friday is set for release in 2024, distributed theatrically in North America by Elevation Pictures (Canada) and Republic Pictures (U.S.), and internationally by Paramount Global Content Distribution.
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“Disco’s Revenge” is anchored in the expansive storytelling of legendary American record producer, guitarist, composer and Chic founder Nile Rodgers, who has an executive producer credit on the film, and the personal recollections of Brooklyn DJ Nicky Siano, who was 17 when he started The Gallery, one of the key clubs of New York’s underground disco scene. Billy Porter appears throughout the film as a kind of philosophical spirit guide, with music luminaries Nona Hendryx, Grandmaster Flash, Fab Five Freddy, Earl Young, Jellybean Benitez, Kevin Saunderson, Sylvester and Martha Wash also in the mix.
Directed, written and edited by Majeed and Mishara, with additional editing by Navin Harrilal, the film was initially set up as a documentary project by Elevation co-president Noah Segal, with Paramount boarding early on. Christina Piovesan and 86 Media House’s Dave Harris and Sam Sutherland are the producers.
Mishara, a native of New York, who worked in L.A. for a decade before moving to Toronto, had worked with Majeed on a documentary from Canadian public broadcaster CBC about the history of video games and knew his talent and experience in working with deep archive to tell stories would be a huge asset, so they pitched their vision of the film as a team.
PvNew met the filmmakers under the virtual disco ball in advance of Hot Docs to ask them about working with Rodgers, archive finds, and what everyone should know about disco. This interview is condensed and edited.
The music and history of disco is a pretty wide area to explore. How and why did you settle on your specific lines of enquiry and the subjects to take viewers through those ideas?
Omar Majeed: Peter and I are both music nerds, and we found it fascinating how this particular genre became so vilified and targeted when in actuality there were parallels between punk and disco, which came up at the same time. Many people don’t understand where disco came from. They hear the word and immediately think of Travolta and the finger up in the air. Disco has become so rigidly defined and was so vehemently attacked that we wanted to dive into the reasons.
The film has lots of archival footage and many characters. What did you start with and how did you settle on your core characters?
Peter Mishara: Relatively early on, we recognized there was a lot of ground to cover in terms of the story and elements. We didn’t want to just do a history lesson. We were attracted to the ethos of disco, what disco represented at the time and what ideas have carried through, and how the music has become ingrained into all sorts of music forms that came after it.
Pretty early on in the process, we knew we wanted to speak to Nicky Siano and Nile Rodgers to give us a foundation to build from.
Nile Rodgers has a cerebral warmth and emotion that comes out in his interviews. How did you build that relationship?
Omar Majeed: We wanted the film to feel like an oral history of everyone within the scene. Niles of course has authenticity of his experience and understands the deeper story, so it was never a bunch of talking points. He’s a busy person, so we had to work to pin him down, but once he’s in the chair he gives you so much. We were trying to bring something out of him that we hadn’t seen in previous interviews.
Nicky’s story keeps getting deeper through the film. What were you looking for in the conversations you had with him?
Omar Majeed: Music docs have a vocabulary, especially the standard ones where people come in and they kind of bridge a point from here to there. Nicky had been in many films about the era, and he’s incredible on camera. We saw an opportunity to do something different, and ask him about himself. The film starts with him as a young kid, becoming aware of his sexuality at a time when Stonewall is happening. The idea of seeing New York through his eyes really clicked with us.
So we’re situated in that world, with a character who was there, and you have archival footage of Nicky’s club and other iconic underground disco clubs. What was your creative strategy with respect to choosing archival material?
Omar Majeed: People were not filming themselves all the time like they do today. One of the biggest challenges was that a lot of the material about discos in New York in the 70s, especially disco fever era, is pretty cheesy. It’s newsreel material, not very cinematic, and doesn’t get you “into the club.”
Peter Mishara: Nicky came through in that regard as well. People who were in underground film culture in New York were part of a crew that filmed the last night at his original The Gallery so he has all this amazing footage, which was hard to find.
Omar Majeed: We didn’t want audiences to keep seeing the same shots of people dancing. You need something that makes you feel the pulse and the energy and the underground. Nicky was not only able to bring us his insights, character and his soulfulness, but he also sat on this just absolutely beautiful trove of footage, which becomes a subtle homage to that era of New York, when different cultures would bounce up against each other.
