Opens May 15 @ the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema

TORONTO – The great documentarian Albert Maysles – who passed away recently at age 87 – honours his elder, the enduring fashion icon Iris Apfel, in the vibrant and personal Iris.

A fashion entrepreneur and interior designer, she of the trademark owlish eyeglasses, Iris has informed style and taste through all our lifetimes. As a cultural marker, the flamboyant and opinionated Iris has helped redecorate and/or restore design antiquities at the White House for nine presidents.

Iris finds her still hard at work at 93, still quick with a quip and an opinion. Maysles’ profile tells her story from her upbringing in Queens, New York during the Depression to her introduction to fashion with Women’s Wear Daily and the establishment of a long-running textile company with her husband Carl Apfel.

And it shines a light on the lioness in winter, with a still unbridled spirit that sees life as an ongoing, never-ending series of fashion choices.

We see her selling her personal fashion lines on the Home Shopping Network and through MAC Cosmetics, and watch her photographed for Vogue (the ultimate vindication of fashion relevancy). Maysles, the most intimate of practitioners of cinema verite, captures her spirit as he haggles at a Harlem street fair and reflects her pride as she takes the viewer on a tour of her closets in her Palm Beach and Park Avenue apartments.

And we appreciate her place in the evolution of design as she shares her appreciation of quality textiles with the curator of the Peabody Essex Museum, in Salem, MA and in her role as a mentor for the University of Texas.

Her mantra: “Keep busy and creative!”

“I feel lucky to be working,” Iris says. “If you’re lucky enough to do something you love, everything else follows.”

Along with his late brother David, Albert Maysles contributed some of the most influential films to the documentary genre, including the post-Altamont-Rolling Stones film Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens, the tale of the mother-daughter relatives of Jackie Kennedy who fell into dissolute lives behind their mansion walls. Albert’s 30-plus films pioneered “fly-on-the-wall” documentary filmmaking. He died on March 5, 2015. His daughter Rebekah Maysles makes her producing debut on Iris.

KinoSmith and The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema will feature an Albert Maysles retrospective a week before the theatrical opening of Iris beginning Friday May 8. Films included are Grey Gardens, Gimme Shelter and Salesman.