The Nomi Song

Klaus Nomi was a countertenor who came from Germany to New York with operatic training. When he appeared on stage at the start of the eighties, both his look and his voice seemed to have arrived from another planet: sharp make-up, geometric costume, and a voice singing pop songs as though they were opera. He got club audiences to like opera. Andrew Horn's documentary rests on the accounts of people who knew him and on footage from the period. Nomi died in 1983 of causes related to AIDS; these were the first years of the illness and some of the people around him pulled away. The film neither covers that up nor exploits it. The telling gives the loneliness, the friendship and the person behind a stage identity all together. It won the Teddy Award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2004.