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Cutie and The Boxer Director: Zachary Heinzerling
Cutie and The Boxer is a love story chronicling a unique and chaotic forty-year relationship in New York where survival intersects with ambition, identity and the creative process. After forty years of marriage, Ushio continues to obsessively pursue the style of “action painting” he crafted 50 years ago in post-war Japan. Noriko, now free from the demands of motherhood, is possessed by a new found energy for her work of etchings, print, pastels and watercolors. She has also created a series of comic-book style drawings that viscerally and humorously depict her challenging life. At age 79, Ushio Shinohara is the legendary Boxing Painter and was a core member of Neo Dada, one of the most radical avant-garde collectives in postwar Japan. As a young artist in Tokyo, Ushio became famous for his raucous performance art and he set out for New York City in 1969 seeking international recognition. Noriko, now 67, came from Japan at age 19 to study art in New York and was captivated by Ushio's passion at their first encounter in a Soho studio. Noriko abandoned her art education to become wife to an unruly, alcoholic husband and later, mother to their only son. The film begins in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn, where the couple creatively manages their creeping poverty. Examining each artist's complicated history in turn, the film reveals the roots of their unique relationship. Ushio and Noriko Shinohara, bound as they are by years of quiet struggle, have a vibrant creative energy combined with hard, dependent love. Through candid scenes we come to understand that the stark differences in the Shinoharas' art and personalities are the basis for a deep and challenging symbiosis. The film shifts back and forth between present-day verite footage in Brooklyn and a stylized version of the past, blending archival material and the artists' own illustrations, blurring the lines between life and art. At its core, Cutie and The Boxer is an inspirational portrait of a vital couple wrestling with the themes of identity, sacrifice, survival, aging, and love as they live fully authentic lives dedicated to art. |