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Paper & Glue

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Paper & Glue

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Summary

From early illicit graffiti videos captured on Paris rooftops at night to a monumental portrait set on the U.S.-Mexico border wall to a current collaboration in a California super-maximum prison, "Paper & Glue" uses the power of collaborative art to uplift communities and inspire self-expression. Told through artist JR's first-person accounts, the film uses his vast personal archives to revisit and reveal rare behind-the-scenes moments in his life and work over the past 20 years.

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Review

A star rating of 4 out of 5.

Jayne Nelson

Graffiti artist JR (short for Jean-René) spent his teens illegally tagging his name on buildings. His life changed after he stumbled across a lost camera on the Paris Métro, a find which sparked a career in photography. Yet, he kept his love of marking public spaces, pivoting from spraying walls to pasting his own photos on them. This documentary charts what happened next: audacious projects (including the Oscar-nominated 2017 feature Faces Places, which he co-directed with Agnès Varda), global fame and a growing social conscience. JR has pasted giant faces on everything from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the bridges in the centre of Paris. Paper & Glue, directed by its subject, follows him through the years as he tries to unite disenfranchised communities through art - including the prisoners in a high-security US prison. "Art is not part of the state," he explains. "It's something that we own; we, the people, own. And that's why it goes so far." As we see his jaw-dropping ideas connect with both grieving grandmothers and convicted murderers, it's hard to argue that he isn't making a small but very real difference, one pasted poster at a time.

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8.2/10

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Credits

Cast

rolenameSelfJRSelfLadj Ly

Crew

rolenameDirectorJRProducerMarc AzoulayProducerSara BernsteinProducerHunter NolanProducerDallas Brennan RexerComposerAdam PetersDirector of photographyRoberto De AngelisDirector of photographyHunter NolanDirector of photographyTasha Van ZandtDirector of photographySebastian ZeckEditorKeiko Deguchi

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Languages

English | Portuguese | French | Spanish

Formats

Colour

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