Banksy in 'Exit ThroughThe Gift Shop 'Film - Essay Example

Maybe Thierry became a bit arrogant when his hero Banksy suggests to him to focus on his own art and leave the film for him to finish. I think Banksy said that to gain control over the documentary as he wanted to make it into a real film, and not just a picture collage like Thierry’s effort Life Remote Control was. But Banksy didn’t foresee that Thierry would get crazy with his own ambitions and organised a massive exhibition with work he didn’t produce himself, but making a lot of money with it nevertheless.

It’s ironic how this fateful event gave the documentary itself a new direction, or story to tell. But documentaries are about real life and life is unpredictable. This means a documentary can turn out differently than the filmmaker initially imagined it to be. I think this is what happened to Banksy. He seemed to be annoyed of Thierry making money, and pretending to be an artist, which is understandable, especially as Banksy is a great and innovative artist himself, who worked hard for his success and therefore deserves it.

However, he also shows sympathy for Thierry (by explaining that his compulsive filming relates to him losing his mother as a child). I believe that Banksy didn’t mean to ‘destroy’ Thierry’s reputation, but to show that our society accepts art too easily as art, without questioning the artist and his real motivation. By doing this, Banksy also introduced a new style to documentary filmmaking-the object becoming directly involved in the filmmaking process. It will be interesting to see if other artists (including musicians, actors, filmmakers etc) who are subjects of documentary films will take a more active part in the filmmaking processes in the future.

Banksy's Exit Through The Gift Shop – The Director's Role in a Participatory Documentary Film Exit Through The Gift Shop is a story full of irony and role reversals between amateur documentary filmmaker Thierry Guetta and acclaimed street artist Banksy who during the filmmaking process discloses Guetta to be an obsessive copycat artist. The film's narrative starts with portraying street artists and Banksy at work. The focus shifts onto Thierry's mission to become a successful artist himself when Banksy consciously initiates a role reversal from being the subject of the documentary to becoming its director.

Film theorist Bill Nichols explores the influence documentary films can have: “Documentaries of social representation…are intended to have an impact on the historical world itself and to do so must persuade or convince us that one point of view or approach is preferable to others” (3). Banksy's move to take the camera from Thierry and turn it on him is therefore clever and calculated. By taking control over the filmmaking process, Banksy could fulfil his own agendas regarding the messages he wanted to convey to an audience.

To achieve this, Banksy successfully combined several documentary filmmaking techniques as defined by film theorist Bill Nichols (33): the ‘participatory mode’ (director being part of the action), the ‘expository mode’ (using so-called 'voice-of-God' narration) and the ‘reflexive mode’ (revealing and reflecting on documentary film-making practises that are usually hidden from an audience).1 I identified Banksy's four main agendas / messages he aimed to convey