Today was my Banksy day - I watched his street art documentary “Exit Through The Gift Shop” at the Berlinale Film Festival!
Right at the start a warning: Those of you who don’t want to know any info about the content of Banksy’s film should stop reading this article, the rest of you will now read my short “Exit Through The Gift Shop” review…
First of all I have to say that the film is really great - I love it. It isn’t one of these street art documentaries you already know, it’s something bigger! “Exit Through The Gift Shop” tells the story of Thierry Guetta aka Mr. Brainwash and how his “Life is beautiful” art show overtrumped Banksy’s legendary “Barely legal” urban art exhibition and shows how stupid the international art market works.
Brainwash, who displays some behavioural problems, started after the death of his mother to film everything - his family, foreign people and other things. Although that has nothing directly to do with street art, there’s an very interesting fact about his family: Mr. Brainwash’s cousin is nobody else than French urban artist Space Invader!
With the help of Invader, Brainwash gets in contact with other famous artists like Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Zeus, Burf, Buffmonster, Ron English, etc. and of course Banksy - Always filming them while pasting, spraying and painting, until he began doing street art and copying other artists himself. The man who told him to do so was of course no one else than Banksy…
Afterwards, the film shows the making of Mr. Brainwash’s successful break-through - The Mr. Brainwash “Life is beautiful” exhibition in LA - and we learn that Banksy took him along to several street art actions.
The film is spiked with hilarious comments by a blurred and voice-deformed Banksy and its story is so crazy that I was wondering whether this whole thing really happens after the screening…
“Exit Through The Gift Shop” is a masterpiece of a street art documentary, a great film for those who have no knowledge about street art and its pioneers and a even greater film for those you have! Watch the trailer now!