‘Man Who Stole Bansky’ tells Mideast street art tale

Portman backs out of Genesis prize

LOS ANGELES, April 21, (Agencies): “The Man Who Stole Banksy,” a street art documentary that premiered at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival on Friday, spins a tale that mixes would-be art-world avarice with Middle East politics.

But the film about the removal and sale of a graffiti work on a concrete wall by anonymous British street artist Banksy in Bethlehem also serves to put a human face on an area beset by violence, said director Marco Proserpio.

“Most of the things I have seen about Palestine was picturing them as victims — not just victims but not human beings,” the 33-year-old Italian filmmaker told Reuters.

“It’s not the common story you tell about Palestine,” he added. “The Banksy artwork was the right occasion to picture them as human beings.”

Banksy, who works in secret and whose artwork has fetched sixfigure sums at auction, traveled to Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank in 2007 and painted six images.

The film focuses on one work — a black spray-painted donkey whose documents are checked by an Israeli soldier in an ironic twist on the Jewish state’s strict security — and how one day it went missing from its concrete wall.

A main player Proserpio encounters is taxi driver and amateur bodybuilder Walid the Beast, who with the help of a well-off local businessman has the work removed and listed on eBay for $100,000.

A Danish collector buys the work but has so far been unable to resell it, and it now sits in European storage as a commodity, removed from its original context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“I wanted to investigate the different consequences of this action,” Proserpio said.

The film, narrated by punk rocker Iggy Pop, dives into questions of ownership, theft and the sale of street art, whose creators may never see a penny when their public displays are taken into private hands.

While Banksy’s works are public sensations in Europe and the United States, the film shows ambivalence among many in Bethlehem. At one point, Walid declares, “Banksy can’t change anything.” But the documentary shows the effect on younger Palestinians, who understand the attention and power street art can give to individual expression amid the ongoing conflict. It is, in fact, a universal story, Proserpio believes. “It’s a primal need to write on walls to communicate with the people around you,” he said.

Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman has cancelled her participation in a Jerusalem ceremony where she was to receive a $2 million (1.6 million euro) prize, saying she was troubled by “recent events” in Israel, organisers said.

The Genesis prize, launched in 2013, is awarded to “extraordinary individuals who serve as an inspiration to the next generation of Jews,” according to their website. Recipients contribute their winnings to causes of their choice. The prize foundation was informed by one of Portman’s representatives that “recent events in Israel have been extremely distressing to her and she does not feel comfortable participating in any public events in Israel”, it said in a statement late Thursday.

The US-Israeli actress, an Academy award winner, “cannot in good conscience move forward with the ceremony”, Genesis was informed, forcing them to cancel the ceremony set for the end of June.

The foundation did not say which events distressed Portman, but Israel has come under scrutiny over its use of live fire over the past three weeks during protests and clashes on the Gaza border.

Thirty-five Palestinians have been killed and hundreds wounded by Israeli forces since the protests began on March 30, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Israel says its open-fire rules are necessary to defend the border, but the European Union and UN chief Antonio Guterres have called for an independent investigation into the deaths.

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Vox Cinemas, owned by Dubai’s Majid Al Futtaim, said on Thursday it had received a licence to operate cinemas in Saudi Arabia and would open a four-screen multiplex theatre in Riyadh “in the coming days”.

The deeply conservative Muslim kingdom is ending a nearly 40-year ban on commercial cinemas, which were shuttered in the early 1980s under pressure from Islamists but are returning through a modernising drive by the reform-minded crown prince.

The first theatre — operated by AMC Entertainment Holdings — was launched last week, with public viewings starting on Friday. The authorities plan to set up around 350 cinemas with over 2,500 screens by 2030, which they hope will attract nearly $1 billion in annual ticket sales.

Vox said in a statement it was investing 2 billion riyals ($533 million) in Saudi Arabia to open 600 screens in the next five years, starting at Riyadh Park Mall which will host the kingdom’s first IMAX screen.