Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)

I am not sure how this garnered a 'Best Documentary Film' Academy Award nomination, because while part of it is documentary-like footage, and significant 1/4 of the film is a spoof, pure and simple. it is a con run on the viewer of the film, poking fun at the interest that one might have in "the next great thing". it has a Warholian feel to it in many respects, and if he were alive today, I think we would have been amused.

There is something both odd and engaging about Thierry Guetta, the antic Frenchman who guides our experience — and would like to guide our perceptions — of “Exit Through the Gift Shop.”
Perched on a stool in front of the camera, sporting impressively original facial hair, Mr. Guetta is constantly in motion. Legs pumping and arms waving, he narrates the story (Rhys Ifans covers the voice over when Thierry isn't talking).
Banksy, the notoriously reclusive British street artist, appears only rarely, face hooded and voice distorted--he alleges in the film that he did the editing. It is Banksy we hope to see, influenced by the hype that the artist carefully erected, in interviews and on the festival circuit. What they will find is, like Banksy’s best work, a trompe l’oeil: a film that looks like a documentary but ends up feeling a bit like a manipulation.

Spanning almost a decade and several continents, “Exit” tells of Mr. Guetta’s infiltration of the secretive world of street artists, greased by his cousin, the Parisian artist Space Invader, and a video-camera obsession which pre-dated his love affair with street art. He films everything, in an obsessive-sompulsive way, and street art allowed him to have a focus for his obsession. Claiming to be a filmmaker, he becomes the unlikely accomplice of a movement whose members have a vandal’s fear of recording devices. He accumulated thousands of hours of tape, including some of Banksy working.
While we are in the seriously self-aware company of artists like Invader and Shepard Fairey (the future designer of the ubiquitous Obama “Hope” image), the film is relentlessly entertaining, a fascinating document of work whose life span is commonly determined by city councils and cleanup crews. The astonishing tags of Neckface and Swoon, Cheez and Coma were made to be filmed, and perhaps the biggest disappointment of “Exit” is that we are allowed to glimpse so few of them. This is a movie to be watched by everyone, regardless if you see street art as art or vandalism. It will make you notice things on the streets of your town, and make you wonder about the person who created it.