documentary

“Exit Through The Gift Shop” is a documentary about a maker of a documentary that he never wanted to make. Thierry Guetta is a person obsessed with filming and through a cousin of his, he stumbles upon the underground world of street art. Street art is mere graffiti taken a step further. Using different techniques streets artist go way beyond merely spraying tags or images against walls. With silkscreen, paint, posters and later anything that came to their minds, street artists started to enlighten the streets with critical and sometimes thought-provoking images. Since polluting public space is of course not legal (no matter it is just rubbish or regarded as art by some), the emerging street art scene is an underground movement. Guetta got some of the most famous artists to allow him to film them while they were working. He keeps saying that he wants to make a documentary about street art, but he never really wanted anything more than just recording what he saw. When eventually the most famous and most elusive street artist Banksy more or less forces Guetta to become a street artist himself, hyping himself in LA as Mr. Brainwash, Banksy took up the task of going through the thousands and thousands of tapes and create the documentary himself. Some people think that the whole Guetta story is a hoax set up by Banksy. “Exit Through The Gift Shop” starts as an interesting view into “the biggest subversive subculture since punk”, but later shifts towards the exploitation of street art in the normal art scene and Guetta creating his own hype. It is thus a critical documentary which is a nice watch.

Funny, this DVD release is reviewed in the Heidnisches Jahrbuch 2010 and a few weeks later a friend got it for my birthday. It is a silent documentary from 1922 Sweden with nice classical music to cheer things up. It seems to have been a series, at least, there are ‘to be continued’s. The first chapter is text and some images, from the second part on there are scenes played by actors. The camera-work, especially the brownish colours are great and Christensen managed to bring great contrasts in his visuals. Unfortunately somewhere around 3/4 my player started to protest, first it hung and continued and eventually it just crashed, so I have not been able to see the whole of “Häxan”. Also there is a 1968 version on the disc as well (the “witchcraft through the ages” of the new DVD cover I guess), I suppose this is one of the narrated versions that you sometimes hear about. Unfortunately I could not play that part of the DVD at all… This is all too bad, because the disc is not easy to get. Hopefully my player will calm down so I can have another try or perhaps I can try to use another player… What I saw was very amusing for sure.

Henri-Georges Clouzot was a top director in the 1970’ies. His successfull film gave him unlimited financial means for a project he called “l’Enfer” or “Inferno”. These means he did not use for grand trips, massive stages or tons of figurants, but for filmographic experimentations. Clouzot wanted to make a film about a man who thinks that his wife (Romy Schneider) cheats on him, having weird visions and eventually going berzerk. The film was never finished due to several reasons (the main player stepping out of the project, but mostly Clouzot’s heart-attack) and recently a great many (but not all) of the reels have been discovered. The two directors of this documentary tried to rebuild the film and the filming of it with that footage, interviews and old and recent images. Clouzot had his crew create reel after reel with the strangest experiments with colours, lenses, costumes and sound. The idea was that real-life would be short in black and white, but Marcel’s visions in insane colours and disturbed images and sounds. The result could have been interesting, but like I said, the project was never finished. This documentary gives footage from the experimental tapes that would never have been used anyway and relatively large parts of what was to be the film. Interesting.

“24 City” is a highly acclaimed Chinese documentary/film about a wargear factory that has to make room for luxery appartements. Interviewing employers and family, a picture is drawn of a gigantic factory that first moved from one far end of China to another, going downwards when less wars resulted in a drop of demand for products and in the end the factory has to go because the city it helped to grow still needs to become bigger. The interviews are alternated with beautiful images of workers. “24 City” gives a nice insight in a part of Chinese history, but to me it is too much of a documentary.

In our famous five minutes to chose three films, we picked out “The Secret” which seemed like ehm, I don’t know what actually; if it seemed like a Da Vinci Code like film, I think I wouldn’t have picked it out, but it was about a secret that was known way back in the past a to a few in the present. The “film” appears to be some kind of documentary about the “law of attraction” which says that everything that happens to you, you attracted to you yourself. The rich are rich by choice, the poor are poor by choice. A completely over the top New Age documentary with scientists and gurus telling you that you lead your own life and that you can have the car you want and be successfull only by having good thoughts and positive feelings. After 20 minutes of listening to all this, we pulled out the DVD and put on something descent: The Prisoner. I have no clue why a DVD such as this one should be in a videostore.
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