Mapping: “Exit Through the Gift Shop”

We receive a glimpse of our world — digitally rendered and/or real — every time we watch a motion picture. But what role does location and setting really play in film? As an attempt at starting that conversation, we’ve started this series of interactive Google (film) maps, centered on movies for which location plays a significant role. Click on the embedded map below to open a larger map in a separate window. Then click on the map’s flagged spots — accompanying texts will appear — and move around as you like, stopping at the sites that interest you the most, to create a personalized narrative tour through this film’s locations.

Art is a universal language in “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” In this documentary, international street artist Banksy travels the world, painting nine intricate stencil pieces on a barrier in Israel’s West Bank, leaving several social statements in the U.K., leading a painted elephant to Los Angeles, and hanging his art at every major museum in New York (complete with handmade placards).

“Exit” begins in Los Angeles, the home of Thierry Guetta, the French filmmaker-turned-artist who Banksy documents. After traveling with Shepard Fairey and other street artists who put their work up around the world, Guetta returns to Los Angeles to work with Banksy, and, eventually, to put on his own first solo show.

It was important that this film begin and end in Los Angeles. While the street artists we meet influenced the world, it was ultimately Los Angeles that helped them build careers. As the film progresses, we see Thierry transform from a middle-class retail shop owner to a millionaire while he lives in Los Angeles, a location that has now become a symbol of the American dream… For more, see the map below.