Written and Directed by Kevin Hegge | 104 min | ▲▲▲▲△ | Carbon Arc Cinema
A fascinating look back at the artistic movement that emerged in the wake of punk — a glamorous, wildly extravagant fashion, film, and music scene, with a big, queer heart. The doc provides a scrappy portrait, made through the memories of the participants and a lot of archival footage and photography.
It affectionately tells the story of this collective of students and artists who made a huge impact culturally on the 1980s, far beyond the scene’s British roots. It starts with the history of a series of underground nightclubs that, eventually, broke through in Soho at the Blitz club when everybody started to take notice. One of the joys of the piece is it finds the people who were at the heart of this movement — including Judy Blame, Scarlett Cannon, John Maybury, Duggie Fields, and Princess Julia — are now senior citizens and just as stylish and provocative as when they were younger.
The most prominent figures amongst them — Boy George, Derek Jarman, and Malcolm McLaren — appear in the archival footage. George broke big with Culture Club, of course, but when a New York trend-setter brought some of them over to the US and fame came calling, the question of whether that legitimized their movement or fragmented it is left to the audience. With the inevitable fall came addiction and, most tragically, AIDS. It’s fascinating to learn how important the dole was to the scene, the fact that welfare at the time was robust enough to provide a burgeoning creative culture, that and the opportunity for squatters to live in old buildings.
The unpolished nature of the piece is entirely to its credit — so much of it has that Betacam-transferred-to-digital charm. One supposes the lack of original music from the scene has to do with the price of music rights (and maybe that George isn’t one of the originals who agreed to talk about the old days), though Tramps! would make a terrific double bill with the glossier doc about another musical beneficiary of the scene: Soul Boys Of The Western World about Spandau Ballet.
