“Bellmore: The Unscene” is a documentary about the distinct music scene that spawned from the underbelly of Long Island…Bellmore. The movie centers around a clique of friends that have created bands together for over two decades. In the early 1980’s, MTV was still “Like a Virgin.” Madonna, Culture Club, and Michael Jackson ruled the airwaves. Many of the kids of Bellmore didn’t connect to these poppy sounds and campy images fed to them by mass culture. In search of something real, they foraged deep underground. Deep enough to find “hardcore”, a style of music like punk rock accessible to anyone even if you don’t know how to play an instrument. Connected through their love of hardcore, dozens of Bellmore kids created music and a mayhem of their own. Twenty years later the band names have changed, the sounds have evolved, hair has been lost and weight has been gained but the same kids are still at it. Throughout the years they’ve become an extended family — a dysfunctional, abusive, trashy family that could only have been hatched in a lost town like this. Through exclusive in-depth interviews, photos, and live footage, Frank Fusco and Jim Muscarella (Bellmore natives themselves) document the development of Bellmore’s music scene while posing an uneasy but critical question to its surly adherents: Is there really a scene here? These musicians regale past and present glories in The Unscene — akin to a veteran recounting war stories. After all, once a Bellmore band leaves the stage, the club looks like a war zone. In the Bellmore scene, people have a bizarre way of expressing themselves: they throw garbage — lots of it — at their beloved bands. This ritual came to fruition one magical Christmas night amid a double-billing of Rat Bastard and Zombula 451?. A flyer promoting the show ominously read B.Y.O.G. — “G” for Garbage. Henceforth, Bellmore would be known among scene-goers as the birthplace of garbage rock. The question is, why hasn’t anyone ever heard of these bands? With the exception of one drummer who broke out of the shackles and joined a legendary hardcore band, none of them have “made it,” at least in the way most people would consider that phrase. Nobody outside of the insular Bellmore knows who they are. But Why? They’re all talented and driven (whether it’s to play music or to do more drugs is questionable). It’s possible that it’s because Bellmore bands make music for themselves, for Bellmore. Comfortable in their non-conformity, the musicians of Bellmore know that “making it” is entirely beside the point. Well, most of them anyway, because Bellmore has given birth to yet another entity. a super-group consisting of key players from all the Bellmore bands. This “three-headed monster” (so called because of its three lead singers) calls itself Eggplant Queens. It’s the closest thing to a boy band as Bellmore’s ever going to get. They may be the one band with enough attitude (mixed in with recklessness) to break the chains of Bellmore dependency. There’s something brewing with this band. The question is, can they, can anyone, emerge from the growing pile of Bellmore’s stinking garbage? Bellmore. Is it a scene?