The sun streamed through the filthy windows on the second floor of Queen West’s Kops Records. With my coffee, Dictaphone and purse half-balancing on the windowsill, I leaned against a crate of records to interview legendary fashion photographer, Elaine Constantine, who was in Toronto during TIFF for the North American premiere of her first feature film, Northern Soul.

In this crammed corner (just hours before she’d depart to New York City to shoot a Vogue cover) Elaine took me back to the night in 1976, northern England, when she was first introduced to northern soul music. It was an introduction to the scene that would later become the inspiration for the only film she ever wanted to make, a film that took 18 years to get to be taken seriously, 18 years to get into theatres. But when it did, oh boy, was it a winner.

Northern Soul is about a scene, a movement, and a type of music, but it’s also the story of John Clark (Elliot James Langridge), an insecure and directionless teen boy, still getting dressed by Mom. Almost overnight, John turns into an influential DJ that boys want to be like and girls want to smooch. Sometimes, all it takes is one song.

What details can you remember from that night in 1976?

I was about fourteen and was in the main youth club in the town centre. There were about 1000 kids in there – it was a massive venue. They had the rock stuff on, then the pop stuff, and then they dropped this one record and all these guys started doing spins and kicks, backbreaking acrobatics. I said to my older cousin, “What’s this? This is incredible!” “This is Northern Soul.”

I was enthralled. I wanted to find a venue that played all of that, so that’s when I started travelling out of my hometown, and it opened up my horizons.

Do you remember what you wore? 

We used to take three shirts, cause you’d get wet. And then you’d have to go to the toilet to change and put deodorant on again. I had three friends who got into that music at the same time as me. We were a bit of a gang. We got scooters; we were really independent at an early age.

What led you to become a fashion photographer?

I wasn’t as interested in fashion as I was youth culture. The fashion was an accident. When I started shooting fashion, it was like an anti-fashion. I wasn’t interested in the clothes or high-end designer gear. I was interested in creating a story and bringing clothes in that were vintage or second hand, and if we had to, we’d throw in the odd label to satisfy the magazine editor.

We could create a story of stills that we liked with FACE Magazine or ID Magazine. [Today] you work for the Vogues and have no creative control. The person in the pictures is the one with the biggest following on Instagram. The only creative part of it now, for a fashion photographer, is the initial idea – everything else is dictated. For me, fashion photography is limiting.

What is it about youth culture that you like so much?

I like the idea of independent thought and rebellion. It’s a thing that exists in its own right.

What made you want to make this film?
It’s the only film I wanted to make. It wasn’t a question of this or that – this was it.

You started writing the film in 1997. That’s a long time ago. What were the biggest challenges?

Getting people to take me seriously as a filmmaker was the biggest challenge. Also, funding. Funding was impossible. Festivals were impossible. Everything about somebody taking me seriously as a director, and Northern Soul as a potential theme for a movie, was impossible. Every door was closed.

What kept you going?

Stubbornness and this sense of entitlement. “If you’re going to do it, I’m going to do it!”

How did you pitch it?

Saturday Night Fever meets Kids. I wanted it to be between those two films, but set in northern England.

Every generation has a defining scene in their youth. What’s happening in the UK now?

I’m the wrong person to ask – I’m fifty. I could be their Grandma! But when I capture a sense of what’s going on, it makes me a bit depressed. Things that we took for granted, like going out and drinking and smoking and taking drugs and having fun – are all being controlled. You go into a nightclub now and they’re searching you in a heavy manner; you can’t smoke, you can’t drink when you smoke. It’s killing the freedom. I wouldn’t like to be a young person going to clubs today. They’re managed so tightly. You’re treated like criminals because you want to go out and hang out with a group of people. It’s crazy, what it’s become.

Northern Soul opens in theatres this weekend. It’s brilliant and will make you want to dance, drink and fuck. Watch the trailer now.