It seems almost impossible to us that Banksy's Academy Award nominated film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, is a decade old now. At the time it came out it felt like a line in the sand for the entire street art community. This side is history, and that side is where the commercialization and heart and soul will be lost. He wasn't wrong, either, it seems.
As we are going through Juxtapoz archives (including re-reading our Banky interview from a few years back) as part of the Jux Saturday School series coinciding with the complete altering of daily life here in America and around the world, we think we wanted to remind people just how groundbreaking and unique Exit Through the Gift Shop really was. If you were lucky to see some of the early previews of the film, like Juxtapoz was in SF in 2010, it felt like our genereation's film. Whether youl liked street art and graffiti, it was a commentary of the greed that the ultra-rich have over prevailing culture, how street art went from outlaw art form to corporate commodity. And let's be honest... Banksy is fucking funny, too. It's entertaining, insightful, full of pranks and social commentary and just plain good.
Keep updated to our Jux Saturday School series here.
