Yayoi Kusama is almost 90 years old. After 30 years in a psychiatric institution in Japan -  she suffered from hallucinations, obsessive-compulsive behavior and depression as a child - and after at least two decades of anonymity, the Japanese artist  isnow a giant figure in the contemporary world scene. In 1993 she represented Japan at the Venice Biennale - after being driven out in 1966, when she performed without authorization and sold pieces from her Narcissus Garden installation for two dollars a piece.

Born in 1929 to a conservative family in rural Japan, she expressed early on a desire to move to America and make art. She arrived in New York in 1958. In the 1960s she attracted critical attention with paintings of obsessively colored dots, and nude happenings that were often interrupted by the police.

Nominee Grand Jury Prize Documentary Sundance  Film  Festival  2018, the film contains interviews with her friends,collaborators, art world colleagues and various scholars, as well as excerpts from her diary and letters, including those she sent to American artist Georgia O'Keeffe when she was very young.

 

 

Heather Lenz, author, filmmaker and producer,is passionate about documentaries and biography films. Her first short documentary about a bicycle inventor, Back to Back, was nominated for a Student Academy Award.Since earning her MFA in Cinematic Arts from USC, Lenz has worked on film and television projects in various roles including as a researcher on programs for The History Channel and Food Network and as an Associate Producer for a PBS series about the environment.