PUERTO VALLARTA, MEXICO -- Two eccentric Austrian filmmakers are trying to keep the memory of the late rock superstar Freddy Mercury alive -- and they are hoping a Grammy Award will help them do it.

Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher's 60-minute TV version of the biopic Freddy Mercury: The Untold Story is up for a Grammy Wednesday night for best long form video. It is competing with a Moby DVD, a film on Bob Marley and a Mel Brooks extravaganza on the making of his Broadway revival of The Producers.

The expanded 78-minute version of The Untold Story, which is intended for a future theatrical release, just debuted as a sneak preview on the Floating Film Festival.

The FFF screening was a test to see if general audiences could relate to an intimate portrait of the flamboyant Mercury, who died of AIDS on Nov. 24, 1991, Dolezal tells The Sun. "And a Grammy will help," he says of pushing the film out to a wider audiences in theatres.

"You don't have to be a Queen fan to like the film," says Dolezal, who was on board the FFF until disembarking here at Puerto Vallarta to fly to Los Angeles for the Grammys.

"You don't have to know anything about Queen or Queen music or even Freddy Mercury to like the film," Dolezal says. "That was my goal. Of course, Queen fans or anybody close to Queen, they like anything that is released and has to do with Freddy Mercury. But the challenge was to interest general audiences and create some understanding."

The film shows very little concert footage. Instead, Dolezal and "my team," as he likes to call DoRo Productions, examined Mercury's unusual life from the inside, starting with his birth in Zanzibar as Farrokh Bulsara. His family was part of the small Parsi religious community, most of whom fled the country during a violent revolution. The Bulsaras ended up in England, where Mercury eventually went to art school, found his voice as a rock singer, changed his name and eventually became a superstar as the front man in Queen.

The Untold Story looks at Mercury's multi-culturalism, his coming-out as a homosexual, and his battle with AIDS, and shows his multi-dimensional talent, including his flirtation with opera. "He was a genius," Dolezal says.

The Untold Story is a long way from a rock video, says Dolezal. "Basically, to do a very personal portrait, I had a few motivations."

One was to pay back Mercury for choosing Rossacher and him, "two crazy Austrians," instead of English or U.S. filmmakers, to do most of the Queen rock videos.

Mercury also inspired him as a filmmaker, pushing the envelope because of his own art school background. "He was a very educated person in terms of film."

Dolezal was impressed with Mercury's courage during his struggle with AIDS. "He was very brave with his illness. Even near the end, he still didn't want to be treated special."

Dolezal says it is important for people to pay attention to artists such as Mercury because they represent a blending of cultures.

"This complex person," Dolezal says of Mercury, is an example for humanity "at a time when mutual understanding of cultures and differences should, I think, be one of the priorities to survive as a human race."