Gogol Bordello's Eugene Hütz, 'Scream of My Blood' Filmmakers Tell the Story of a Punk Band

Eugene Hütz, founder and leader of the American gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello, would probably have ended up as a painter wearing "dirty pants and long hair" had his parents who hadn't left the Soviet Union when he was 16.

"I probably would have become a painter, because there was more than one paved way in there in my family," he says. "I drew most of my childhood, and my uncle - Mikhail Mykolayev - is a fairly well-known painter who still lives in Kyiv."

Fresh from a brief impromptu solo guitar gig at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, after the international premiere of a new documentary about the group, "Scream of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story", Hütz fits the bill, though his khaki cargo pants are unstained with paint.

The singer was born in Kiev, Ukraine, but the Hütz family left behind years of Communist oppression and moved to Western Europe in the last days of the Soviet Empire. His father was always a non-conformist - something that caused trouble in the Soviet Union - and Eugene says that even at the age of nine teachers saw him as a dangerously independent thinker. But it was the collapse of the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 that finally forced the decision to leave.

At the age of 17, after living as refugees in several countries, the family had obtained US immigration visas and settled in Burlington, Vermont. Eugene – who had previously played in proto-punk bands in kyiv – thought his creative life had come to an end in the small New England town. But a stroll down Main Street – which had several independent record stores – gave him hope, and when he came across some teenage punk rockers, he expressed his delight with a heavily accented reference to the San Francisco punk band Dead. Kennedys. Neighborhood kids looked at this strange new arrival in town and said, "Sex..." to which Hütz replied, "Guns."

"Scream of My Blood" courtesy of Vice News

The story, told in "Scream of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story", directed by Nate Pommer and Eric Weinrib, is a small part of the puzzle that is Gogol Bordello. Showing at a special screening Thursday in the bohemian spa town from which the festival takes its name, it was its first screening in Europe after its world premiere last month at New York's Tribeca festival. The choice of Karlovy Vary has a certain historical resonance for Hütz: Nikolai Gogol, the Ukrainian-born writer, was a visitor to the famous Grand Hotel Pupp in the Bohemian spa town in 1845. The imposing and ornate hotel is the where festival VIPs stay, and it records Gogol's Visit on a brass plaque placed in the cobbled entrance courtyard, alongside other illustrious visitors, including Richard Wagner in 1835, Luis Buñuel in 1956, and John Travolta in 2013.