The Tightrope Dancer

This film portrays the exuberant life of the painter Vali Meyers. She is 59 years old and has lived a life of drugs and poverty. But even in times of dejectedness, she remained loyal to her brushes. Vali is not someone who makes a profit out of her sorrow. On the contrary, she is a hardened, eccentric woman with a roaring laugh, crude language, and a heavy Australian accent. Vali's originality is not restricted to her work, it is also reflected in her lifestyle. Her appearance is unusual, to put it mildly: she wears multi-coloured gypsy clothes, her red shock of hair reaches down to her waist, and she is proud as Punch of the tattoos on her face including a moustache.
Vali Meyers lives in a barren valley in South Italy, where she can only be reached on foot. She leads the life of a hermit, together with a hundred animals. But it comes just as easily to her to shovel together the shit of her fifty dogs as to appear in a limousine at an exhibition of her work. Her isolation is breached once every year with the presentation of her new paintings in New York. She feels forced to sell her drawings for large amounts of money to be able to maintain her animals. When in New York, she stays at the fashionable Chelsea Hotel and concentrates on selling her work. During this period, friends of Vali's such as Deborah Harry (Blondie), actor Peter Weller (robocopand George Plimpton can at last seize the opportunity of visiting her. In her two contrasting worlds, Vali remains the same: flamboyant, very charming and totally unique.