The 1990s the movie world experienced a boom in documentaries and “essay/biography” films—and then, just as quickly, many of the great films from that decade vanished from the collective consciousness. Nico Icon, Susanne Ofteringer’s moving and mindful examination of celebrity, destiny, and destruction, is a prime example of a film ripe for reconsideration, and which is now thankfully available for all to see.

Arguably the most enigmatic figure to grace the annals of rock ’n’ roll history, Nico became a star during her brief and controversial fronting of the Velvet Underground circa 1966/67—that’s her unforgettable Teutonic drone on classic tracks like “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and “Femme Fatale.” But she was more than a passive Lou Reed mouthpiece: her formidable achievements before (as world famous fashion model) and after (as a chanteuse par excellence), combined with a series of solo albums (Chelsea Girl, The Marble Index) that have only grown in stature and influence with each passing year, have enabled her to emerge from the murky depths of underground indifference to her rightful stature as a musical visionary.

The structure of Nico Icon is an odd hybrid of linear biography, musical performances, celebrity interviews, and Super 8 footage that suggests a pagan healing circle supervised by Kenneth Anger. This ecstatic presentation obeys an aesthetic rhythm that allows us to appreciate Nico on her own terms, the meanings of her work and her life emerging gradually through Ofteringer’s selectively ordered presentation of information and details.

Nico’s life was not a happy one. She was born in Germany during World War II; her father was killed by the Nazis when she was four. Nico spent a lifetime being exploited and abused by a who’s who of infamous rock ’n’ roll abusers including Lou Reed, Jim Morrison, and Jackson Browne. Nico’s life, upon examination, is as far from the glamourous pageant that rock revisionists would want us to believe in and remember her for. Ofteringer is adept at giving the viewer psychological insight from a myriad of unsavoury truths; as a result, we come away with a compassionate impression of a seemingly hedonistic life that, on the surface, does little to arouse our compassion.

What emerges from Nico Icon is a portrait of a strong and powerful creative healer who lived life on her own terms and sacrificed herself and her beauty for her art. For Nico fans, the film is a treasure trove of wonderful clips (such as an early “video” of her first minor hit, Gordon Lightfoot’s “I’m Not Saying,” as well as a rare record promo for “Evening Light,” her 1969 collaboration with Iggy Pop), along with ridiculously rare concert footage, some of it filmed with the Velvet Underground and some of it during her 1980s solo period.

The film ends with her broken lover John Cale sitting alone in an empty, cold room with a piano, singing “Frozen Warnings,” a song as beautiful and tragic as the life that created it.