My Name is Alan and I Paint Pictures (2007)

Producer-director Johnny Boston's documentary My Name Is Alan and I Paint Pictures etches out a haunting portrait of Alan Streets, a gifted young artist residing and working in New York -- who also just happens to be a schizophrenic. The film follows Streets during and after his residence in New York's Bellevue Hospital; the artist exudes undeniable talent, but as he treks out each morning to paint cityscapes (independently of the weather that unfurls before him), the schizophrenia proves so debilitating that it raises key and pointed questions about his ability to even survive in the world, let alone network successfully enough to establish himself as a formidable talent on the art scene. Step by step and day by day, we nonetheless watch Alan persist impressively in his quest to establish himself, with the aid of prodigious quantities of alcohol, legal drugs, illicit drugs, and anything else that he can use to help himself cope. Boston tells Alan's story through observation of his day-to-day, plus interviews with the painter himself, his friends, his family members, and others acquainted with him.