The Underground Sistine Chapel

Nobody commissioned this film.

We wanted to document the work of an artist whose approach runs against the grain of contemporary art, and we wanted total freedom in how the film was made and in how it reached people. No broadcaster, no distributor, no commission — which meant no one to answer to, and no one to fall back on.

The subject funds his work outside the institutions. So did the film.

Pascal “Pboy” Boyart grew up near La Chapelle — which he calls the birthplace of European graffiti — and spent close to fifteen years covering Paris in ultra-realistic frescoes before turning to monumental portraits and the expressive weight of a gaze. By his own account, he was the first mural painter to affix a Bitcoin QR code to a painting so a passer-by could pay the artist directly, and the first to turn murals into digital collectibles. Financing a film about that through the ordinary circuit would have contradicted the thing being filmed.

• Source:pboy-art.com ↗

A working gold foundry is not a film set, and eight months is not a visit.

The fresco went up inside a former gold foundry on the edge of Paris — a place living its thousandth life, held together by people whose stories are as varied as they are fiercely non-conformist. They defend the place’s autonomy and leave its doors open at the same time. Filming there for eight months meant being accepted rather than granted access: no lighting rig anyone had to work around, no schedule anyone had to keep but ours, and no second chance at a day that had already happened.

Funded in cryptocurrency, cut over four months, scored from scratch.

Shooting ran eight months from June 2020. Post took four from January 2021 — edit, colour grade, sound mix and an original score. The budget came from cryptocurrency rather than the French funding circuit, a route we chose for the freedom it bought and were still learning as we used it.

One film, released on two networks with different failure modes.

The feature, and a première at the Grand Rex in Paris in 2021. Then the release itself: free, at the same moment, on IPFS and on YouTube. IPFS so no single host can withdraw it; YouTube so people actually find it. Neither network alone does both jobs. Pascal released his own work alongside it — a collection cut from the fresco’s own characters, whose holders are known as the chapel’s guardians. The wall itself can be painted over at any time; the pieces outlast it. That collection is his, and it is still standing.

• Source:The Underground Sistine Chapel by Pascal Boyart ↗

The address we published to in 2021 still answers.

The film took Best Documentary at the London Independent Film Awards. But the result worth checking is plainer than a laurel, and anyone can check it.

• Source:The film on IPFS ↗