Last week my girlfriend and I were amongst a lucky few to get hold of premier tickets to Banksy’s new film ‘Exit Through The Gift Shop’ which is out in cinemas today. Although we had seen a snippet of a trailer for the film we didn’t quite know what to expect, particularly as the screening was in a tunnel underneath Waterloo station in London.

My plans always end up congregating on the same day so we had to rush from the Absolut Vodka screening of “I’m Here” by Spike Jonze to Waterloo station. From here we had no idea where we were heading but followed the smell of spray paint to Leake Street Tunnel.

Leake Street tunnel is a scary place as it’s secluded and covered from floor to ceiling in amazing graffiti and street art. It’s the kind of place where you should expect to get mugged (of course I didn’t because I’m rock hard) but it’s also the kind of place to see amazing art work.

So we walked down the tunnel, past graffers painting outlines and street artists lining up stencils, until we got to a small door with a bad mother fucker standing outside. He mumbled a few words to us, we mumbled a few back and we went on in.

Walking through the door we were greeted with a whole range of Banksy pieces from statues and burning Mona Lisa’s to moving hot dogs and ice cream vans. We could walk up close and it didn’t have the clinical feel of a gallery… because it wasn’t.

When the time was right and once we’d bought our drinks and pop corn from the ice cream van we were ushered through a parted velvet curtain into a makeshift cinema by more bad mother fuckers. We took our seats on old leather couches that suitably looked like they’d been pulled from junk yards and the film began.

The film itself was great, but judging from the amount I’ve written so far I guess I was more impressed by the location, atmosphere and general feel of the place. A narrator took us through the documentary with a masked, and voice changed, but still Bristol accented, Banksy adding bits along the way.

One of the first things we find out is that this film is not actually about Banksy. This threw me at first and I thought it would be shit. Banksy tells us that a film maker tried to make a documentary about him but seeing as the film maker, Theirry Guetta, was so interesting (and highly bizarre), he turned it round to be a film about the film maker.

So we follow round this film maker who is absolutely CRAZY but completely hilarious. It’s mostly through point of view shots because Theirry is the one filming it and we learn about his life, his family and his interests. He began to get infatuated with street art from his street artist relative known globally as Space Invader (if you don’t know him you might recognise the picture below from Covent Garden, London).

As he filmed more and more of Space Invader doing his work he started to meet more and more influential street artists and gradually became obsessed with Banksy. He saw Banksy as unattainable and impossible to document but eventually they were brought into contact with each other and became friends. That is, until a new self acclaimed street artist called Mr Brain Wash came along and ruined it all.

You’ll have to go watch the film to find out more, which you can do today as it has been released in a whole load of cinemas.