Exit Through The Gift Shop [DVD]

United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menu, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: Exit Through The Gift Shop is the groundbreaking film from Banksy the world's most famous graffiti artist; a global phenomenon with a fiercely guarded anonymity. Capturing the exhilarating behind-the-scenes world of graffiti art, an eccentric Frenchman tries to film and befriend Banksy, only for the artist to turn the camera back on its owner with spectacular results. Featuring exclusive footage of Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Invader and many more of the world's most infamous graffiti artists at work, Exit Through The Gift Shop is the hilarious true story of low-level criminality, companionship and incompetence. The story of how one man set out to film the un-filmable. ...Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)

Like his street art, Banksy's documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop is a prank comment that at times provokes some serious thought. It tells the story of Thierry Guetta, a French-born Los Angeles fashion designer employed within the street-art community to film it at work: scaling industrial sites, wallpapering concrete structures or stencilling cutesy tags on military barriers. As with every scenester, Guetta has artistic ambitions of his own and, with some charitable encouragement from Banksy, duly gives himself an edgy nickname (Mr. Brainwash) and heads for the bright lights of the art elite--announcing his arrival with a ritzy and well-attended LA showcase. Except Guetta's installation is wildly derivative, relentlessly duplicating pop-cultural icons and product packaging as if centuries of artistic evolution had suddenly dropped dead at Andy Warhol. There is a sizeable question-mark placed over the figure of Guetta, and it is up to the viewer to decide if he is real or if the whole movie is another of Banksy's artistic subversions. If fake, the fictional biography of Mr. Brainwash is a useful way to showcase the footage of the guerrilla methods of relevant street artists like Shepard Fairey and Banksy himself. If he's real, then Guetta is an equally convenient illustration of the distinction between genuine art and art lovers--and the legion of hucksters, hipsters, posers and parasites that breed in their shadow. --Leo Batchelor