Exit Through the Gift Shop
Director: Banksy & Shepard Fairey 87 minutes. Rated: R
Film Synopsis
Dubbed as the world’s first Street Art disaster movie, Exit Through the Gift Shop began as a film about the biggest counter-cultural movement since punk. Street Art emerged in the 90’s as a hybrid form of graffiti, struggling to establish itself as much more than the defacement of private property. Eccentric French shopkeeper turned documentary maker, Thierry Guetta sought to capture on film the biggest figures of street art until his quest led him to the most notoriously secretive street artist. Banksy, a British stencil graffiti artist has fiercely guarded his anonymity to avoid prosecution despite the fact that his work is featured globally from post-hurricane New Orleans to the separation barrier on the Palestian West Bank. The artist turns the camera on Guetta and describes the work as “A film about a man who tried to make a film about me”. Rhys Ifans narrates this rabble-rousing story of low-level criminality, companionship and incompetence that premiered as a favorite at the 2010 Sundance Festival.
"An exhilarating hall-of-mirrors look at what happens when global art fame turns anonymous, artists become objects, fans turn into artists, and the whole what's-sincere-and-what's-a-sham spectacle is more fun than art was ever supposed to be." - Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
"Subversive, provocative and unexpected, Exit Through the Gift Shop delights in taking you by surprise, starting quietly but ending up in a hall of mirrors as unsettling as anything Lewis Carroll's Alice ever experienced." -Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
