"My mission is to communicate, to wake people up, to give them my energy and accept theirs." Those are Patti Smith's words in the trailer for 'Patti Smith: Dream of Life,' an upcoming documentary film about her life and career. More than a decade in the making, 'Dream of Life' features the influential poet-singer at work, and touches on the people who were important to her creatively and personally.

"To me she's a true artist, a true performer," Steven Sebring, the film's director, tells Spinner. "She hates the word 'musician.' 'I'm not a musician. I'm a performer, a writer, an artist.' That's something I really wanted to show in the film because that's what I knew of her -- that she was all these things."

The mainly black-and-white film, which opens in New York City on August 6 and throughout the country in September, takes a free form approach in telling Smith's life story. It mixes footage of Smith and her band performing in various places around the world with personal moments such as her painting in a studio. Other scenes include Smith playing guitar with actor and playwright Sam Shepard, and her paying respect to French poet Arthur Rimbaud and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

"It's a real true portrait of a very complex and somewhat elusive artist," longtime Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye, who is also featured in the film, says. "Steven did a very good job of bringing out the many components of what makes Patti unique. And she is a unique artist."

Originally a fashion photographer, Sebring first encountered Patti Smith in 1995 while on assignment for Spin magazine. At the time Smith had recently lost her husband, the late former MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith, and was gradually making her return to performing. Not knowing much about Smith, Sebring says he felt an immediate connection with her.

"In Detroit, where I met her," he recalls, "she's a youthful, attractive soft-spoken girl. I didn't take pictures until the end of the day. But when I saw her [perform] at Irving Plaza [in New York City], this wasn't the same woman to me. I was totally hooked."

Beginning in 1996, Sebring, with his 16-millimeter camera, filmed the singer and her band both onstage and offstage. "I was just that friend who was behind the camera," he explains. "That's why the film is so personal because I wasn't going into it with a crew -- I was just trying to do something really cool and documenting somebody that inspired me."

"Steven did a great job of getting inside our band world [and] becoming our friend," Kaye says. "He's captured a certain informality that is often lacking in these more standard rock docs."

While Smith is renowned for being a punk rock legend and an activist, she is also depicted as a person with a warm sense of humor and personality, whether it's her showing off an old childhood dress, or interacting with her elderly parents at their home. "She's a human being," Sebring says. "She's funny and can tell story. That's what makes people sort of shocked."

Following the imminent release of the documentary will be a companion book, and an art installation entitled 'Objects of Life' that features items from the film. "There's nobody like her on the planet," Sebring says of his subject. "I hope that a lot of people are able to see this film just for that fact -- that they should know who she is."