Beautiful Losers

Beautiful Losers (Revolver Entertainment)

Trailer

The film starts in New York City in the early 1990s, before mayor Rudy Giuliani's reign and the city's zero-tolerance campaign. The streets are mean. Cop cars burn on the corners and riots and murders are a regular occurrence.

Against this daily dose of civil unrest a disparate bunch of young skateboarders, surfers, punks, hip-hop and graffiti artist descend on the city. One of them, Aaron Rose (also the director of Beautiful Losers), rents a derelict storefront in the then rough and ready Lower East Side of the city, calls it Alleged Gallery and begins curating shows and parties from the premises.

Artists, musicians and writers meet up, swap ideas put on joint art exhibitions, making the venue a hip place to hang out. As Rose says, 'the only goal was to have fun and share stuff with our friends'.

Beautiful Losers is about growing up and finding an identity, and at the same time transforming a subculture without losing its non-conformist ethos.

It focuses on eleven artists and the underground scene in New York at that time. The artists featured are the epitome of geek-cool, a quirky group driven by freedom and innovation.

They are do-it-yourself artists with little or no formal training or influence from the establishment. They appear as happy spray painting walls and subways or decorating skateboards as putting on more 'formal' exhibitions.

Slowly, their reputation spreads and their work now permeates the mainstream as personal stories are interwoven, relationship are formed, some lasting, and there is also a tragic end to one supremely talented artist, Margaret Kilgallen.

Many of the artists went on to huge commercial success, designing album covers, film credits, fashion and making TV adverts for Pepsi and Volkswagen.

They didn't become beautiful sellouts. The film is above all a testament to their friendship, which is as strong as ever. Although set in the arts scene you don't have to be an artist to understand this film, it is surprisingly unpretentious and full of warmth and character, and is guaranteed to inspire.

The film is shot on digital in that edgy hand-held way with a ripping score by sometime Beastie Boy Money Mark. The film is also cut with archive footage of the young artists when the city was theirs for the taking.


Beautiful Losers is out on DVD after a short run in cinemas