Tom DiCillo’s new documentary on the rise and fall of cult rockers the Doors, When You’re Strange, opens with a dramatic coup de théâtre. Wandering through the California desert, the band’s iconic singer Jim Morrison hears a radio news report of his own death. The effect is spooky, dreamlike and loaded with portent.

The footage comes from Morrison’s little-seen experimental short film HWY: An American Pastoral, aka Highway. It was shot in 1969 when the Los Angeles quartet were beginning to unravel, their boozy singer awaiting trial on charges of profanity and indecent exposure at a notoriously chaotic Miami concert. In an inspired touch, DiCillo has dubbed on a new soundtrack which allows Morrison to foresee his own death in a Paris bathtub two years later.

“When I had the idea to use the footage from Highway as a kind of structuring device, it turned the film away from a typical documentary and more towards a narrative feature starring four guys,” DiCillo explains. “It’s a really powerful story. It had a lot of drama, that was what interested me.”

“Having Highway in there is really a great idea from Tom,” says John Densmore, former drummer for the Doors. “Having Jim sit in the car, turn on the radio and hear the announcement of his own death, that is f***ing great. It’s confusing and brilliant.”

When You’re Strange is largely assembled from archive live footage shot by Morrison’s former film-school friend, Paul Ferrara. There are no talking heads, no dramatic reconstructions, and very little extraneous detail. DiCillo’s bid to give these much-told events a fresh slant lies partly in the narration he wrote for Johnny Depp, which strains a little too hard to root the band at the heart of a politically and socially tumultuous era.

And yet the film still functions as a cohesive and engaging story, giving equal creative credit to Morrison, Densmore, Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger. Cutting through much of the mythology that has accumulated around the band’s self-destructive singer, it showcases their rich musical track record, from chamber-pop chart-toppers like Light My Fire to the brooding blues-rock epics Riders On The Storm and The End.

“The more I looked at the footage, the more I thought this stuff just looks like it was shot yesterday,” insists the New York-based director. “It looks so energised and brand new, it would be a crime to intercut it with people blabbing about how they knew these guys.”

The worldwide cult surrounding Jim Morrison, and the still-murky circumstances of his Parisian demise, have led to inevitable speculation that his death was faked. Predictably, DiCillo’s film is already generating fresh conspiracy theories. Despite including a disclaimer that it contains no actors or restaged footage, some fans have reacted with confusion to the Highway clips. “There is this persistent misperception,” DiCillo says, “that because this footage we used from Morrison’s own film looks so beautiful, people think we re-created it. I continue to be astonished by that. If it was an actor and not Jim Morrison, why would we put him in close-up for everybody else to see?”

Making When You’re Strange involved some delicate negotiation, particularly with the family of Morrison’s ex-partner Pamela Courson. Her death from a heroin overdose three years after the singer remains a sensitive subject.

“It’s all very personal, intimate stuff and people are careful with that,” DiCillo says. “We had some negotiations to do. The Courson family own the rights to the Highway footage, and they were excited about me using it. They just said they would appreciate certain things being said, or not being said, about their daughter.”

Relations between the surviving members of the Doors have also become “a little tentative” recently, Densmore admits. In 2003, he and Morrison’s family filed a legal injunction against Manzarek and Krieger to stop them performing as the Doors of the 21st Century with new vocalists, including Ian Astbury of the Cult. They subsequently shortened their band name to D21C, then Riders On The Storm.

“Jim’s estate and I made them aware that the Doors is Jim, Ray, Robbie and John,” Densmore says with a dry laugh. “It’s not Ray, Robbie, Ian, Fred, Tom and whoever. They got that message. But Ray and I and Robbie were in on the loop with the film. There was no problem there.”

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