ONE of the most enigmatic figures in British pop history, Gary Numan, is the subject of a new documentary which examines the musician at close quarters.

Brighton film company Perfectmotion are behind Gary Numan: Android in La La Land, which follows Numan and his family as they move to Los Angeles from England. The crew were allowed access to every part of his life, even at one point joining the family on a camping holiday.

The singer, who has been lauded for his innovative approach to electronic music, and is best known for his late seventies hits Cars and Are Friends Electric?, was also embarking on a new album at the time of the film’s production – 2013’s well-received Splinter (Songs from a Broken Mind).

As the name suggests, the record is deeply personal (and partly recorded in Wealden, East Sussex).

One half of the film’s directorial team, Brighton-based Rob Alexander, says that just as Numan was in an open and revealing mood on the album, the film captures him at his most honest. While the filmmaker says he and creative partner Steve Read aren’t “Numanoids”

– the collective term for Numan superfans – they wanted to portray the life story behind his influential music.

“From Gary’s point of view, I think he either wants to do something or he doesn’t.

Splinter (Songs from a Broken Mind) was very therapeutic for him, and revolves around the same highs and lows we explored in the documentary.

“He was making that album to figure stuff out, and there were a lot of people, having watched the film who commented on how forthcoming he is.”

Part of this soul-searching involved Numan’s Asperger syndrome, which, as Alexander says, partly informs “who Numan is, and the music he makes.” The singer frequently refers to unequivocally “having this thing”

(or words to that effect) throughout the film, a reflection of the component part the syndrome plays in his entire personality.

“It has caused him issues in the past, and people thought he was a bit unusual, with some papers calling him a freak because he is slightly awkward in social circumstances.

“In the late seventies and eighties people didn’t understand it,” he adds. “At the same time, he has this tunnel vision to achieve things, and whatever anyone said about him wasn’t going to affect him too much.”

Numan also experienced severe depression in the years before the making of the new record. So candid was the singer in his contributions to the film that Alexander says “there wasn’t a question he wouldn’t answer.”

This honesty included voicing doubts over the commercial and critical reaction to Splinter – although ultimately he needn’t have worried. Having received negative reviews for his early nineties output, the singer was apparently “scarred” to the extent that he “almost goes into a default mode of saying, ‘well, I’m not expecting it to do well.’”

At heart, says Alexander, Android in La La Land is a love story; not just between Numan and his wife Gemma – a former Numanoid – but “everyone in Gary’s world that helped him get through the dark times.

“Those are the relationships that Gary credits for helping him turn his career around.”

Gary Numan: Android in La La Land, Duke of York’s, Brighton, August 28 8.30pm, £10.50, call 08719 025728, director Q & A to follow the screening.