THE streets of America really are paved with gold. Just ask Eugene Hutz, frontman for the Gypsy-punk band Gogol Bordello.
In the documentary “Gogol Bordello Non-Stop,” Hutz tells how he fled his homeland, Ukraine, when he was a teen, and traveled the world before coming penniless to New York City.
Here, he founded his now-nine-piece, multi-ethnic band, which started in a dive bar at Canal and Broadway and moved on to performing worldwide.
Eventually, the band got a gig on Conan O’Brien’s TV show, and the charismatic Hutz performed on film (“Filth and Wisdom”) and onstage with Madonna.
The ultra-thin Hutz — who has a waxed handlebar mustache and often performs bare-chested or with his head covered by a red bucket — tells Margarita Jimeno, a fan who directed, produced, lensed and edited the pounding documentary, that his success is a dream come true.
Gogol Bordello plays a mix of punk rock and Gypsy music that recalls the work of the Serbian No Smoking Band. Onstage, Gogol Bordello puts on a visually outrageous show that one member describes as “kick-ass.”
The band’s biggest fans, says Hutz, are Hispanics and Eastern Europeans. One female fan says that when the band first started performing in New York, she would drive from Boston each weekend just to see it.
Home-movie footage of Hutz in 1988 Kiev shows an underground superstar in the making.