Indie Memphis Nights

Indie Memphis and Temple Israel present a screening of Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405, the Academy Award winner for 2018 Documentary Short Subject.

This is a portrait of a brilliant 56-year-old artist who is represented by one of Los Angeles’ top galleries. Her body of raw, emotional work reveals a lifetime of extreme depression and anxiety.

The artist, Mindy Alper, has suffered through electro-shock therapy, multiple commitments to mental institutions, and a 10-year period without speech. Her only consistent means of communicating has been to channel her hyper self-awareness into drawings and sculpture of powerful psychological clarity.

Through an examination of her work, interviews, reenactments, the building of an eight-and-a-half-foot paper-mache bust of her beloved psychiatrist, we learn how she has emerged from a life of darkness and isolation to a life that includes love, trust, and laughter.

Indie Memphis Nights is presented by Orion FCU