An outrageous artist put in a time frame

Twenty years after the term New Wave was used to describe the iconoclastic French cinema of the late 1950s and early ‘60s but before the name became a commercially viable radio format in the ‘80s, it described the avant-garde hipsters of Lower Manhattan.

Gentler than punk and edgier than disco, its sonic contemporaries, New Wave encompassed an array of music as well as fashion, performance and visual arts in a scene that attracted creative misfits and outcasts from across the country and around the world who migrated to New York to reinvent themselves. Brash, vibrant and colorful, it was a subculture that blurred the lines of gender, sexuality and race with an emphasis on outrageousness over aptitude.

Andrew Horn’s alluring documentary, “The Nomi Song,” looks at the meteoric career of singer Klaus Nomi, who at once epitomized the New Wave with his outlandish space alien appearance and stood apart with his wraith-like, operatic renditions of pop music.

Born Klaus Sperber in 1944, the slight young man with a dramatically receding hairline arrived in New York in the mid-1970s when it was the nexus for disenfranchised, alienated young artistic types. He studied opera but shunned his natural countertenor, preferring to sing in a disarming falsetto.

Eventually, he found himself performing in a downtown New Wave vaudeville show, where his extraterrestrial persona landed fully formed and was embraced by his fellow outsiders. A rock band was created to back him, and the shows and his outfits were designed to exploit his camp appeal.

A club sensation, his career alternately exploded and sputtered. He bombed in New Jersey opening for Twisted Sister but was a hit on a Midwest tour. Nomi appeared on “Saturday Night Live,” singing backup for David Bowie, and a record deal led him back to Europe, where he recorded albums and made videos, but superstardom eluded him before he died of an AIDS-related illness in 1983.

Initially, Horn does a good job of providing a timeline, but as the film progresses it’s a little difficult to track whether events are taking place over weeks, months or years. It’s a quibble, however, compared to the compelling story the filmmaker presents. The interviews feature Nomi contemporaries, such as actress-performance artist Ann Magnuson and painter Kenny Scharf; as well as collaborators Kristian Hoffman, musical director of the Nomi Show; and Page Wood, the group’s original drummer and art director.

Horn is adept at getting people to tell stories that do not necessarily reflect well on them, yielding a more intimate and revealing documentary. “The Nomi Song” also benefits from a plethora of archival performances and a genuinely eclectic soundtrack. Horn, who knew Nomi, does an excellent job of evoking the exhilaratingly hedonistic period the film covers as well as the long shadow that the coming of AIDS casts over it.

*

‘The Nomi Song’

MPAA rating: Unrated

Times guidelines: Language, nudity

A CV Films and Cameo Film production in co-production with ZDF / Arte, released by Palm Pictures. Writer-director Andrew Horn. Producers Thomas Mertens, Annette Pisacane, Andrew Horn. Director of photography Mark Daniels. Editors Angela Christlieb, Guido Krajewski, Eric Schefter. Set design Ruth Peyser. Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes.

Exclusively at the Landmark Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 281-8223.