“It’s basically the story of how one man set out to film the unfilmable. And failed” – Banksy.
“Exit Through The Gift Shop” the new documentary by guerrilla street artist cum social terrorist Banksy is a rather amazing and raucous experience. Having premiered at Sundance earlier this year, the film was an unqualified hit and we can testify for once, Sundance crits were not intoxicated with the thrill of first-of-the-year festival anticipation and high altitudes, this doc — which some have already speculated is an apocryphal in art prank of its own — is the real deal and one of the best films of the year so far.
We’ll have a review for you soon, but essentially it is — if you believe what’s presented and frankly, we do, because we want to — a film being shot by Thierry Guetta, a French born, U.S. residing obsessive compulsive videographer who can’t stop documenting everything with his camera. Without revealing too much, his cousin is the French street artist Invader and through him he eventually became immersed in the street art world and became friends with Shepard Fairey and then ultimately, the impossibly elusive Banksy.
But as the “documentary” progresses, it evolves into something else entirely as Guetta transforms himself into the artist Mr. Brainwash and the film takes a major left turn. It’s rather brilliant, and utterly fascinating we must say. It’s a portrait of mania, good intentions gone wrong, perhaps a Warholian statement about the sad state of art world phenomenons or perhaps just another trickster move on Banksy’s part, but whatever the case, it’s rather ingenious, ironic, tragic and utterly absorbing. In many ways if it’s real, it’s about the cult of personality, sublebrity and creating monsters. Chances to see this one may be rather limited — you see in a sec — but either way pencil this one down as a must-see you need to track down at some point. This will surely be a film that gains cult status on DVD.
The soundtrack to the film is great too, great use of Air and the likes, but the true nugget is the original beat-heavy score by Geoff Barrow of Portishead and the additional music created by Roni Size. Hopefully some of their work will be available as we get closer to release.
Producers Distribution Agency — a new company co-founded by Cinetic Media’s John Sloss, the folks who repped the film at Sundance — is releasing the film on April 16 in in New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco, and possibly other cities subsequent to that according to the LATimes. Word of mouth will be important here and word of mouth will probably be incredibly strong. Look for Banksy to probably show up clandestinely and pull off some stunt in each city. Or at least, that’s what we’re betting on. It’s a terrific doc, be patient and then when it comes to your town, don’t sleep on it. Update: we’re also told on April 23 there are pending dates coming for Chicago, Boston and Phildelphia.
Other than theorizing that the doc itself is a hoax — again, we don’t buy it, because the end message would rather eat its own tale, robbing the film of its power — some have theorized that the film is receiving this unorthodox release because no other distributors were interested. That just couldn’t be true cause it would mean all the distributors out there are mentally challenged.