Paper & Glue

This isn't just a story about JR, the artist. It's also about humanity behind his work. He talks about his early days painting graffiti on walls to finding a camera in an abandoned bag in the Paris subway. This find changed his life. He began adding photographs to his work. He says he started by writing his name on walls. Then, he wrote other people's names on walls by putting their photographs up there. He did-with amazing results! 'Paper & Glue' is moving and powerful. I highly recommend it.

Paper & Glue is a documentary about French graffiti artist JR who evolved into one of the most influential 'performance' artists of our time. After finding a camera in the Paris subway, he began photographing, printing and gluing oversized portraits of everyday people on buildings around Paris. While his work was derided by some and often removed from the various buildings around the city, he also became a conduit for social change in many of the worst neighborhoods of Paris. JR takes his vision to various other locations throughout the world and in the process shows how the act of giving a face to the faceless not only humanizes them but also reminds us that those whose lives are often completely foreign to us are not much dissimilar to us in their wants and needs.

This movie is a blessing that I cannot recommend more highly.

Visually, this documentary was fascinating and beautiful, however, I was very disappointed that the close captioning was terrrible and practically non-existent. A musical note would denote that music was playing, but when JR would speak (or anyone else) there was nothing - unless they were speaking another language, in which case we got a translation. Those of us with hearing challenges missed out on most of this documentary because we could not know what anyone was saying.