Film / News
Banksy feud drama-doc premieres in New York
Back in March 2004, Banksy illegally erected a ten-foot statue in a small square off Shaftsbury Avenue in central London. Titled The Drinker, this parodied Rodin’s The Thinker by plonking a traffic cone its noggin. Deep, huh? Hey – that’s street art. But what happened next was even more entertaining. In broad daylight, a bunch of masked thieves pulled up on a flatbed truck and snaffled Banksy’s creation. A chap who called himself AK47 then sent a ransom note to The Guardian claiming to represent a group of ‘art terrorists’ calling themselves ART KEIDA.
Now the story behind this audacious daylight robbery is told in a long-gestating crowd-funded drama-documentary whose sell-out world premiere takes place at Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York on Sunday 17 April. Described as a heist movie, screwball comedy and documentary all rolled into one, it intentionally blurs the line between fact and fiction, just as Banksy’s own Exit Through the Gift Shop did. Banksy himself is played by an actor named Andy Gibbins, who was last seen in the true-life war thriller Kajaki.
is needed now More than ever
The Bansky Job explores the origin of the feud between Banksy and colourful Yorkshireman AK47 (real name: Andy Link) – a former porn star and rave entrepreneur – told from the perspective of the latter. The story goes that Mr. AK47 bought a Banksy art print for £75 and asked a mutual friend to get the street artist to sign it for him. The alleged response from Banksy HQ was that he should not be such a “cheap northern bastard”. Feeling dissed, AK47 planned his brazen theft. After more than a decade of bickering between the two sides, the piece was eventually returned to its former position late last year. It had been modified with the addition of a toilet seat to become The Stinker.
There’s no news yet on a UK release date for the film.
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