Cutie and the Boxer

Cutie and the Boxer (2013) is a documentary you can watch online on iFILM. Director Zachary Heinzerling spent over a year filming in the Brooklyn studio of Japanese painter Ushio Shinohara and his wife Noriko, whose forty-year marriage is the subject.

Ushio is known for boxing paintings — he straps on boxing gloves, loads them with ink, and throws punches at the canvas. He landed in New York in the 1960s and became a fixture in the downtown avant-garde scene. Noriko came from Japan at twenty, intending to study, and stayed as his assistant for decades. Now in her fifties, she has started her own comic strip about a couple called Bullie and Cutie, where Bullie drinks and dominates while Cutie waits her turn.

The film was up for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. What Heinzerling caught on camera is difficult and real: two people who built a life together still working out who that life belongs to. Stream Cutie and the Boxer online on iFILM.