Exit Through The Gift Shop

Wednesday, October 19

7:30 PM

DFAB Room 131

The first film in the "Art That Moves" series will be Exit Through The Gift Shop, a documentary that follows the underground "Street Art" scene of the late 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century.    The Street Art movement consists of a growing group of graffiti artists who have chosen to use a medium considered vandalism by many as social commentary. Banksy, the film's director, is arguably the world's most famous (and infamous) street artist.  Over the past two decades, he has managed to maintain his anonymity, with only a select few people aware of his true identity.  In this film, a well-off shopkeeper named Thierry Guetta seeks to document the underground movement of street artists on video.

Paranoid Pictures, the distributor of Exit Through The Gift Shop, describes the film like this:

Banksy is a graffiti artist with a global reputation whose work can be seen on walls from post-hurricane New Orleans to the separation barrier on the Palestinian West Bank. He fiercely guards his anonymity to avoid prosecution. An eccentric French shop keeper turned documentary maker attempts to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner. Includes footage of Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Space Invader and many of the world's most infamous graffiti artists at work, on walls and in interview. As Banksy describes it, "It's basically the story of how one man set out to film the un-filmable. And failed."

Below is a short trailer for the film:

Please join us in Room 131 of the Dickey Fine Arts Building, October 19, at 7:30 PM as we embark on a cinematic exploration of art, obsessions, and the irresistible drive of human self-expression.