Who owns street art? Who owns Banksy’s street art stencilled on the Israeli West Bank Barrier Wall?
Marco Proserpio’s documentary investigates these questions in his revealing film about Palestine and street art crime, The Man Who Stole Banksy. The Adelaide Film Festival screening documentary is told largely through the eyes of a Palestinian taxi driver, Walid, who stole a Banksy artwork, which offended him, to sell back to the West.
Proserpio says that Walid has seen the film and “seems happy about it” but he hasn’t received feedback from the secretive artist known as Banksy, who was recently in the news for self-destructing his Girl With Balloon painting at a Sotheby’s auction. “As for Banksy no, no feedback from him,” Proserpio says. “And I don’t know him, or who he is.”
Proserpio answers The Adelaide Review‘s questions about the film in the following Q+A.
You arrived in Palestine in 2012 and didn’t plan to shoot a film about Banksy and street art. What kind of film did you have in mind when you arrived?
At the time I was filming some art workshops for kids in a deserted area outside Ramallah, a very poor area. Filming in such a brutal situation made me think about the strength [that] images of that kind would have if I took them back to the western world. We’re bombarded by so many images today that I really don’t know how much an image of a young kid literally living in the trash can move us at this point. It’s like we’ve become numbed to the suffering of others. So I was trying to find another way to picture Palestinians. I was looking for a different story and then, by chance, I met Walid.
Walid was the first person you met in Palestine and he told you the story about how he had a Banksy at home. Did you believe him? And did you instantly know you wanted to put him in your film?
He was the first guy I met after I crossed the checkpoint and entered Palestine. He told me about this weird story of how he removed the entire side of a house. At first I didn’t believe him but he was such a lovely character we ended up spending some time together chatting and, yes, I immediately thought he was a terrific character for a documentary about art.
Read the article by David Knight in The Adelaide Review.