When alum and director Annette Mangaard began her film about multimedia artist and improvisional musician Nobuo Kubota, he was 90 and showed no signs of slowing down, continuing his sound-art performances and creating art in his woodshop.
I Am the Art presents a moving and intimate portrait of Kubota, whose creativity never stopped evolving. From early sculpture to sound poetry, avant-garde jazz, and live performance, Kubota spent a lifetime breaking rules and fusing East and West, silence and sound, memory and experiment.
The much-loved faculty member at the Ontario College of Art (OCA), before it became OCAD University, was also a video artist and collaborator during the filmmaking process, giving feedback on filming and editing.
The film, which has its world premiere on Dec. 7 at the Ted Rogers Hot Docs Cinema, took three years to make and was completed in early September 2025, a few weeks before Kubota passed away at the age of 93.
Mangaard says the film’s title comes from a conversation Kubota had with a young woman at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Toronto prior to his sound performance in 2024. She asked if he was an artist and Kubota replied, “I am the art, I will be doing a performance.”
“I learned so much from Nobuo, not so much about making art but about life – being zen, calm, generous, patient and looking at life as an exploration rather than something to ‘get through accomplishing as much as possible along the way’,” she says.
“I recall that once when I was a young single mom, Nobuo came for dinner. My young child and large dog were racing around the table while I frantically tried to get them to sit down. Nobuo glanced around the room and said, ‘nobody is listening to you Annette, you might want to rethink how you are speaking to them’ and he was right! Nobuo was the wisest person I have ever met,” she says.
The film happened organically says Mangaard: “Nobuo and I had known each other since 1977 when he was my professor at OCA in experimental sculpture. In the spring of 2023, Charles St. Video asked if Nobi and I could do an exhibition together for Open Door Toronto Sounds of the City. We had collaborated several times before. So, I made a short video and Nobuo did a performance which I filmed for him. Afterwards, Nobuo asked if I could film more performances of him, and then he suggested we talk about his other artworks, which is part of the film.”
This led to Mangaard applying for – and receiving – a Canada Council grant to make the film, which is also a love story that shows how Kubota was the primary caregiver for his 96-year-old wife, Lee, who had advanced Alzheimer’s. She passed away during the filming.
Much of the film is shot verité style in Kubota’s home, where he lived for more than 50 years with his wife. It includes rare archival footage of his work with Mike Snow and the Canadian Creative Music Collective (CCMC), which he co-founded, and the Artists’ Jazz Band with members Graham Coughtry, Robert Markle and Gordon Raynor. This band become an influential and infamous freestyle jazz improvisational group.
There is also archival footage from Second World War internment camps, where Kubota lived, which showed how resilience and imagination shaped his life and art.
Interspersed throughout the 85-minute film are sound-art performances by 92-year-old Kubota in contemporary settings: OCAD U 2023, MOCA 2024, The Music Gallery 2024 and Shintani Gallery 2024.
“There was a lot of community support for the making of I am the Art with many artists lending me photographs and giving me access to their archival materials,” says Mangaard. “Nobuo was well known on the Canadian art scene and has influenced many of Canada’s artists as a teacher and as a prominent sound artist.”
I AM THE ART: NOBUO KUBOTA premieres Sunday, Dec. 7 at 6:30 p.m., The Hot Docs Cinema, 506 Bloor St. W. The cinema has reserved seating; tickets are available from $10 to $15. There is a post-screening Q&A with Mangaard. Watch the trailer.