She’s 93, wears huge spectacles which make her look a tad cartoon-ish and  dresses ultra flamboyantly with enormous necklaces, bangles and multi-coloured tops.

And yet during her working life with interior designer husband Carl, Iris worked on White House re-decoration projects for no fewer than eight U.S. presidents.

Among a host of other achievements. You’d think that just a few years shy of a century, Iris would be slowing down. But not a bit of it.

She has retained her work ethic and her never-ending mania for collecting. Her Manhattan and Florida homes are choc-a-block from floorboards to rafters with her collections of jewellery, clothes, fabrics, artwork and other assorted bric-a-brac --- even a host of toys.

We also accompany Iris and documentary-maker Albert Maysles (who sadly died in March this year aged a mere 88) across the East River to Brooklyn where she maintains an enormous warehouse also packed with items from her collection.

Amazingly she starts the cull while Maysles’ cameras are on-site. “This can go – and this,” she says, waving a bejewelled finger imperiously.

The items are donated by Iris and Carl to various New York City galleries.

And during an aside to camera, Iris notes quite trenchantly that “all the great hand-crafted trades are going down the tube.” Presumably that’s why she’s kept so many examples.

She’s also not particularly flattering about 21st century fashion designers.

“Most of them don’t even know how to sew and don’t have any sense of history,” she says, dismissively.

We see Iris, her family and friends celebrating Carl’s 100th birthday. Quite an achievement. Sadly, he passed away not long after this documentary was released. He was 101.

See our opening night of IRIS, Friday October 2, in partnership with the Bendigo Mazda Bendigo Fashion Festival. Dress up for your chance to win door prizes - think "New York style, at any age!!" Full details at www.starcinema.org.au.

BIZARRE as it sounds in these times of instant communication with people anywhere on the planet the Angulo children were confined for 14 years to their New York apartment.

Their parents had ordered they stay inside their four walls on Manhattan’s Lower East Side with their Peruvian father keeping the door locked and the key in his possession.

Dad Oscar says he was trying to protect his six sons and only daughter from New York’s drugs and crime. Their American mother, Susanne, home-schooled her brood of seven.

On their very rare trips out of the apartment Oscar insisted the children didn’t talk to anyone.

So reclusive was the family that many neighbours even in their own block didn’t know they existed.

“Once we didn’t leave the apartment for a whole year,” says Govinda, one of 22-year-old twins. “After 9/11 New York changed. It became much more security conscious and, although we probably didn’t know it, a lot safer.”

So, apart from completing their lessons, how did they retain their sanity?

Oscar had stockpiled a collection of 5000 videos and DVDs. He was keen to improve his English so the children shot the videos into the player and learned a lot about American history from movies such as JFK, The China Syndrome and Apocalypse Now.

And with the action thrillers from the collection they’d type out dialogue from movies such as Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and The Dark Knight (a Batman adventure), dress up and act out scenes in their four-bedroom apartment.

For Batman’s costume they used old yoga mats and cardboard from cereal boxes.

And when they eventually get to London and sit on the top deck of a red tour bus four of them immediately recognize world-famous landmarks.

“Here’s the roundabout from National Lampoon’s European vacation,” one explains. Then adopting Chevy Chase’s father’s accent, another exclaims: “Look, kids. Big Ben. Parliament.”

So how did they all gravitate to the real world? In April 2010 Mukunda, then 15, sneaked out of the apartment and walked the streets wearing a Halloween mask.

He was arrested, taken to a hospital and assigned a therapist. Their father could no longer contain them and soon they went out together, walking everywhere --- like ‘a wolfpack’ as their documentary maker christened them --- with their waist-length hair blowing in the breeze.