For nearly three decades, an introverted man in Waco, Texas, who spent his nights sorting mail at the local post office on the graveyard shift would, by day, retreat to a small, cluttered room in his home to paint. To his colleagues, he was just a dude named Kermit. To the fashion elite in Paris, he was the Kermit Oliver, the first and only American artist ever commissioned to design the iconic, meticulously crafted, stratospherically expensive silk scarves for Hermès.
That premise alone is enough to carry a solid documentary, but “A Portrait of a Postman,” making its local premiere at the Boulder International Film Festival this weekend, proves to be much more than your standard artist biography. Directed by Chris Charles Scott, who will appear in person in Boulder, the film unravels a stranger-than-fiction narrative that starts like a quirky success story before pivoting into something profoundly beautiful and, at the same time, devastating.
“A Portrait of a Postman” screens 10 a.m. Saturday at First Church,1421 Spruce St., Boulder; 2:45 p.m. Saturday at the Longmont Museum, 400 Quail Road, Longmont; 12:30 p.m. Sunday at Century Boulder, 1700 29th St., Boulder (sold out, but standby tickets are available)…