Patti Smith: Dream of Life

Feb. 5, 2008 #151 -- The Sundance Film Festival, held annually in the snowy and comfortably gilded confines of Park City, Utah, is about the last place one expects to find rock musician Patti Smith.

More than three decades removed from the release of her first album, "Horses," the woman Rolling Stone magazine called "Punk's Poet Laureate" is not one for swag bags or snowball fights with Paris Hilton.

Smith is a serious woman, with a serious curriculum vitae. She is considered by some to be the seminal female performance artist of her generation — at once a poet, guitar hero, accomplished painter and photographer.

Like her hero Bob Dylan, she disappeared from the public eye at a time when her public most desired another glimpse. Smith's return, after the death of husband Fred "Sonic" Smith in 1994, was kicked off by a stint on tour with "The Jester" himself.

She paid her unlikely visit to Park City on the week of Sundance to talk about and promote a new documentary "Patti Smith: Dream of Life."

The film, shot and produced during more than 11 years by fashion photographer Steven Sebring, offers an off-center, often-shambling ride through the mind of a woman who draws strength from French poet Arthur Rimbaud and the punk pioneer band The Ramones in equal parts.

In a discussion with Peter Travers, host of ABC News Now's "Popcorn," Smith seemed overwhelmed by the breadth of her experience.

"I'm a mother and I'm a writer," she said. "I take photographs, I'm a performer, I have a band. I have responsibilities — you know, we protested the strike on Iraq, so there is [an] activist [at] work."

The movie, which is light on concert footage, regards Smith's day-to-day life as art in its own right.

"There is hopefully an innate spirituality throughout the whole film," Smith said, "so I think it certainly presents a more well-rounded picture of me then seeing a concert film … because it's not a rock 'n' roll film, it's not a concert film, it's a humanistic film."

The decision to allow a camera and the man behind it into her life was not easy. Smith met Sebring through friend and REM singer Michael Stipe in 1995, the year she came out of professional retirement to resurrect a career put on hold by marriage and a new family.