Julien Temple: the dark side of Glastonbury There is no festival this year. But luckily, the director has made a film about the 'frightening, liberating' world of the festival's Shangri-La area

Laura Barton writes as follows:

"There is a moment near the start of Julien Temple's new film about Glastonbury that shows the mass exodus of late-night revellers from the main stages towards a far corner of the festival. They wind their way along the muddy tracks like Christmas Island red crabs, like a column of army ants, floodlights falling on their waterproof hoods and their wild, bright faces: lit up, somehow, by the promise of the night before them. They are going to Shangri-La, the centre of out-of-hours hedonism that in 2009 evolved out of Lost Vagueness as the place to go when the music stops. Full of strange structures, souqs, sculptures, performance art and secret corners, its Blade Runner-style urban film set takes 1,500 crew and artists to construct. While Glastonbury lies fallow this year, Temple's film, Glastonbury After Hours, which will be broadcast a week or two ahead of when Glastonbury is usually held, feels a little like a festival in lieu."

MORE