More than 45 years ago Disco Demolition Night in Chicago was a declaration that disco had "died." But as filmmakers Omar Majeed and Peter Mishara show in the documentary Disco's Revenge, disco is an incredibly important part of music history and a cultural movement that has influenced music genres that are thriving today.

Disco's Revenge dives into the history of disco, particularly in New York City, and how it was able to unite people, creating a space where everyone felt welcome. Throughout the film Majeed and Mishara use archival footage and interviews with individuals like Nile Rodgers, Billy Porter, Nicky Siano and Jellybean Benitez to transport the documentary's audience into these spaces where disco emerged.

"We were very conscious of two things. One, we didn't want to fall into the trap of what everyone associates with this stuff, the kind of typical Bee Gees era, Saturday Night Fever, the kitschy outfits," Majeed told Yahoo Canada.

"The main kind of nostalgia stuff that you get, we wanted to really not highlight that, but rather highlight everything that kind of led up to that, and around it, and ... really feeling a connection to the people who lived it and experienced it, and were there from the beginning. Their voices, their emotional journey, was really important to us"

The filmmakers highlighted that Siano, in particular, had an incredible "treasure trove" of archival material, known as one of the first disco DJs who opened up the first real disco in New York. There were also two New York University students at the time who were allowed into Studio 54 with a 16-millimetre camera, and their footage was a core element of Disco's Revenge as well.

But Disco's Revenge begins with the 1979 Disco Demolition Night, when a Chicago radio DJ encouraged listeners to bring their disco albums to Comiskey Park to be destroyed. While it was a radio promotion rally, seeing the footage as Disco's Revenge takes us through how important the music genre was for so many people, particularly Black and 2SLGBTQ+ communities, it's easy to make parallels to present day rallies that really amplify the polarization of society.

"The Disco Demolition was intended to be this sort of lighthearted radio promotion. ... That was, I think, what was going on, on the surface, but the aesthetics of it, and the early sense of that culture war, that polarized feeling that we have now in the world today, that's very, very, very present there," Majeed said. "As the filmmakers we watched all of it and it's quite intense, the kind of the rallying, the kind of rage you feel in the audience, the fact that the stunt turned into a riot, there was a surplus of anger that seemed to channel all of that."

Mishara added that seeing this footage was a "full circle" moment.

"To say disco died and have people talk about it is one thing, but to see, literally, records exploding into shards, people cheering, is an incredible moment that I think we'd be remiss not to have in there," Mishara said.

"I think an important takeaway too was, at the time I don't think we heard the reactions of people that felt differently. Media played it as sort of this big joke, but we never really heard the emotional reaction from altering voices. And I think Nile Rodgers is really fascinating when he talks about this moment, what it meant to him and how he reacted to it. We never really had that dialogue at the time. And I think that dialogue is so crucial, to see altering points of view on this event. ... I think we really need to have the space to explore how different people react to these things, and I think that's absolutely true today as well."

As we see in the documentary, Rodgers gets visibly emotional talking about the "death" of disco, something that is so important to him and quickly thrown away in pop culture.

"I realized, especially with Nile, he's told these stories many times, but I think what we were trying to get out of him was something a little bit more organic, a little bit more emotional," Mishara said. "And I'm happy with the way we were able to capture him on camera, because I think the way he tells these stories is kind of unique to other other times."

"You can still hear it in his voice, he's still upset about. I think also in the industry, ... there was no support. They put these guys up on a pedestal for two, three years. They were the toast the town. They could do no wrong. And very quickly the industry turned on them and whatever success he's had since then, which is tremendous, you still get the sense that he's bothered by this. That within a day that people turned their backs on him and the band."

For someone like Kathy Sledge, from Sister Sledge, the filmmakers saw that she was more "stilted" in her early conversations for the film, with a particular interest in understanding the angle Mishara and Majeed wanted to take into this story.

"The interview started and it was a little more stilted, but very quickly it opened up, because I think she saw our approach and how we were addressing these things," Mishara said. "Jellybean too. ... By the end of it he was so supportive."

"Disco never died for them. On a pop culture landscape it was dead and buried, and that was it, but for so many of these people, the train kept rolling. The communities didn't disappear, but the music went underground. ... Yes there is sort of, I wouldn't say resentment, but there are issues surrounding that moment in the late '70s, but for many of them, I think it sort of kept moving in terms of their careers."