Are punks destined to become the new hippies given, that is, to frequent fits of celebratory self-analysis? It’s a question not lost on filmmaker Julien Temple, who was present at the Big Bang of British punk in 1976. He has chronicled the history of the Sex Pistols in two films (”The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle,” “The Filth and the Fury”) and now does the same for the Clash with the superb documentary “Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten,” which opens in area theaters today.

“An old punk is just as bad as an old hippie maybe even worse,” he says via phone from London. “I don’t know. They’re both bad things to be. You should move on.” Not yet, though. There are a few gripping stories to be told, and not just the late Mr. Strummer’s.

(He died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 2002 at age 50.) Rock-photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn mined the brief, ill-starred life of Ian Curtis, who fronted the influential post-punk band Joy Division in the late ’70s, for the surprisingly moving drama “Control.” Taken together, the movies argue persuasively though this was not their intent that the era was as important a rejuvenation of rock music as was the British Invasion of the early ’60s.

“I linked it personally to the moment when I was a school kid in the ’60s, when we had great music from London coming out every week,” says Mr. Temple, 53. “I’m talking about the Kinks and the Stones and the Who and the Small Faces.” “The punk thing felt very similar,” he continues. “You knew it was the same energy they were tapping into, the same kind of honesty that fired the music. It stripped it back to the streamlined energy of the form.” Mr.