The World Premiere of Harry Kim's long awaited documentary film Dirty Hands opened yesterday and plays for 1 week only at Sunset 5.

Head to the cinema tonight and catch up with Harry Kim (Film Maker/Director) and David Choe (subject of the film) between 9:30pm - 10:00pm. Posters and T-shirts will be available for purchase/signing.

Buy Tickets here.



Here are some reviews to get you going:


Choe, at root a Los Angeles tagger whose often elaborate works can be baroquely figurative, gleefully obscene and/or adolescently indulgent
(he provided the art work for the bedroom of “Juno’s” pregnant heroine), is unapologetic about his part-time criminality.
And he’s done his time: A semi-accidental assault on a police officer in Tokyo cost Choe three months in jail and an acute revaluation of
his art and purpose. A painter who would punch himself repeatedly in the nose in order to draw blood with which to color his work (we
watch him do it) and who goes dinosaur-hunting in the Congo , has over the last seven years gone through a series of profound transformations
in terms of art and religion; he’s progressed from spray-can bomber and sex-mag illustrator to respected muralist, portraitist and
graphic novelist.
But nowhere does one get the sense Choe has sold out, regardless of what he says about himself. And all the while, Kim has been there.
Fortunately for all of us, the time wasn’t wasted.
The film is about as indulgent as Choe is, rampaging around the globe and its subject’s mind and defying common convention, much like
the artist himself. But there are moments of bliss, such as the moment when Choe, with a spray can in each hand, executes with ambidextrous
virtuosity an ornate face on a blank white wall. It may be illegal, but it’s exhilarating.
-John Anderson


GO DIRTY HANDS: THE ART & CRIMES OF DAVID CHOE Filmmaker Harry Kim has known acclaimed bad-boy graffiti artist David Choe for 20 years, first becoming friends when they attended the same summer camp as teenagers. That information isn't essential in order to appreciate Dirty Hands: The Art & Crimes of David Choe, but Kim's documentary unquestionably gets its intimacy and refreshing evenhandedness from the director's familiarity with Choe. Chronicling the Los Angeles Korean-American street artist's life from 2000 to 2008, Dirty Hands deftly segues between Choe's personal and professional adventures, weaving together his family background, steadily ascending career, sexual addictions, criminal behavior, mental illness and fledgling attempts at becoming a born-again Christian to create a complex and open-ended portrait. Though nowhere as singular an achievement as Terry Zwigoff's Crumb, the agreeably rough-and-tumble Dirty Hands recalls that documentary's willingness to explore its subject's less-savory personal qualities to question how those traits both feed and undermine his distinctive art. (In another crucial similarity, both films were made by people with whom the artists knew well enough to feel completely candid and natural.) A different filmmaker might have depicted Choe as either an angelic rebel outsider or his life as a hand-wringing cautionary tale, but it was Choe's good fortune (and ours) that instead Dirty Hands is the product of a close confidant who has sympathy for his friend but who also sees his flaws clearly. If Exit Through the Gift Shop is a witty, subversive satire on the rock star–ification of underground graffiti artists, Dirty Hands is a sober, loving snapshot of one troubled soul within that milieu. (Tim Grierson) (Sunset 5)


Amazingly, Kim is there from the beginning of Choe’s unusual career, catching the tagger as he stands on the roof of a car
to create a series of whales on the side of the freeway in his early twenties, then capturing an older but not necessarily wiser
Choe lamenting on how he’s sold out by doing graffiti for corporate presentations. The thrill may have subsided for Choe,
who in one scene punches his own nose repeatedly to get the proper shade of crimson, yet watching him work, illegally or
not, is invigorating. The film’s messy aesthetic seems all too true to the artist, who, if he didn’t insist on defying categorization,
would be classified in parts as self-destructive, misogynistic, cynical and yes, immensely talented.

Posted by Put Up Your Dukes at 12:51 PM  

Labels: Art, Reviews