Cinema Meets Visual Arts: Filmmaking According to Banksy

Since its debuts, cinema has always welcomed and even encouraged the collaboration with visual artists, obtaining rather interesting and often ground-breaking results. An example that springs immediately to mind is the surrealist dream sequence conceived by Dalí for Hitchcock’s Spellbound, but the list could be quite long. In some cases, the artists themselves decide to jump behind the camera and apply their technique to the moving image, like in the case of Jean Cocteau. Thus, it didn’t seem particularly odd when satirical graffiti artist Banksy announced his participation at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival with his documentary Exit Trough the Gift Shop, which follows the raise to fame of street artist Thierry Guetta, aka Mr. Brainwash.

Many considered Banksy’s move towards filmmaking as a natural progression in his career and his definitive establishment as a mainstream phenomenon. Before its premiere in Utah, journalists and critics were especially intrigued by the promise that the film would contain some footage of the guerrilla artist himself, which raised hopes that he was finally ready to reveal his identity. Active in Bristol since the early 90s, Banksy has always strived to maintain his anonymity – mostly due to the illegal nature of graffiti, but also to avoid the unwanted attention of the media. Disappointingly, though, his dark silhouette appears in every shot wearing a black hoodie, with a strong backlight that conceals his features and entirely protects his privacy.

Mainly set in Los Angeles, Exit Trough the Gift Shop is the story of Thierry Guetta, a French-born retailer who becomes increasingly obsessed with his camera and eventually decides to make a documentary about street art. The footage seems genuine and gives an invaluable insight on the clandestine expeditions of the bravest graffiti masters, including the elusive Banksy, with whom Guetta begins a friendship. After collecting hours and hours of video tapes, though, the Frenchman is far too unorganised to get something good out of them and Banksy offers to supervise the cut, whilst encouraging his friend to try and become a street artist himself. That’s how, from the ashes of a failed filmmaker we witness the raise of a self-appointed street artist of questionable origins. Under the alias of Mr. Brainwash, Guetta becomes a sensation overnight and his first exhibition Life is Beautiful reaches a huge mediatic and financial success.

Is Exit Trough the Gift Shop a real documentary? This question sees the public opinion split between who believes the plain truth and who (the majority) suspects that this is all a hoax devised by Banksy to expose those experts and collectors who are happy to spend a fortune but can’t establish the legitimacy of an art piece. According to this theory, the real purpose of the controversial graffiti genius is to put in place a social experiment on the attribution of authenticity. Using the caricatural figure of Thierry Guetta (and his transformation into Mr. Brainwash), he shows how gullible the industry is when influenced by a good PR stunt and, to describe its genre, New York Times columnist Jeannette Catsoulis has coined the term ‘prankumentary’.