Film

Art movements come and go, yet it’s rare that a scene’s key player curates its official history. Then again, New York’s Alleged Gallery was always all about DIY self-reflexivity. Director Aaron Rose, the hipster-huckster who founded the Lower East Side hot spot and wrote a book about it in 2005, once again looks back in affection at his own creation; this vérité scrapbook, however, isn’t just nostalgic narcissism. Rose’s gaze focuses on those who coalesced around his cluttered space in the early ’90s: graphic-art geek Mike Mills, photographer Ed Templeton, street muralists Margaret Kilgallen and Barry McGee. Having come from stultifying suburbs and alterna-subcultures (skating, punk rock, graffiti), these downtowners collectively defined the decade’s twee-street aesthetic. Success and disillusion followed, with both peaking during a 1999 gonzo group exhibition in Tokyo.

Were this just another rise-and-fall chronicle, Beautiful Losers would still be a valuable visual history lesson. But what gives the documentary such depth is the way it celebrates the moment when misfits meet their kindred spirits. The cultural time capsule doubles as a testament to the joys of outsiders bonding, with interviewees emphasizing how they finally felt like they belonged somewhere after years of asphyxiating alone on the fringe. The group’s friendship provided the foundation for artistic fertility; Beautiful Losers pays equal tribute to both, a heart-on-sleeve move that makes all the difference.