Born in 1940, Mary Heilmann didn’t begin painting until the end of the 1960s. She grew up in California, and in 1965 enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley—its ceramics and sculpture program. Heilmann graduated three years later and moved to New York City, where her work was excluded from multiple large-scale ceramics exhibitions. In response to those rejections, she picked up a brush. In the years to come, Heilmann’s abstract paintings established her as an innovator. Her oeuvre is colorful, evoking the ebullience of her native Golden State. The documentary Mary Heilmann: Waves, Roads, & Hallucinations deploys archival material and in-studio footage of Heilmann as it retraces her life and career. A screening at Roxy Cinema is followed by a Q&A with the film’s director, Matt Creed. —Jack Sullivan