16/10/10……..This week at Thame Cinema 4 All

THIS week’s film at Thame Cinema 4 All, Nelson Street, Thame, is Exit Through The Gift Shop, UK / USA 2010, 86 minutes, 15 certificate, Directed by Banksy, Thierry Guetta.

This very funny and very clever ‘documentary’ manages to combine laugh out loud humour with serious questions about art, authenticity, and the venality of the contemporary art scene. Thierry Guetta, apparently a one time friend and associate of art prankster Banksy, is the subject of what initially appears to be a documentary about street artists. Thierry has a lucrative vintage clothing business in Los Angeles, but in his spare time he obsessively films pretty much everything on videotape. He establishes relationships with a network of street artists, and begins to follow their nocturnal activities with the intention of making a feature length documentary about subversive public art statement.

The film, intercut with talking head contributions from a hooded “Banksy”, follows Thierry’s increasingly bizarre trajectory, as he abandons his miles of un-useable tape and decides to become a street artist himself. In pursuing the efforts of its rather hopeless protagonist, the film nonetheless succeeds in arguing the cultural significance of seriously good street art. It is art that is funny and tongue in cheek but that succinctly tackles important political and cultural issues on a conspicuous scale.

It is very rare to have a night at the cinema that manages to be challenging without sermonising, and that allows you to leave the cinema with a spring in your step, laughing and puzzling over what you have seen. Cheeky and priceless.

To be preceded by award-winning autobiographical documentary: Thank you Skinhead Girl.

THE words ‘Oxford’ and ‘history’ might conjure up science or the English civil war, CS Lewis or JRR Tolkien. But there are other Oxford histories seldom told: more recent, those about the experience of marginal cultures. Oxford film maker Sharon Woodward, joins us to share her own slice of Oxford history – her award winning autobiographical documentary Thank You Skinhead Girl. followed by a Q&A with Sharon before Exit Through The Gift Shop,

This Saturday 16th October
Doors open 7.30pm Thank You Skinhead Girl 8pm. Admission