The Underground Sistine Chapel is a free documentary on YouTube (that premiered in June 2021, at the mythical Grand Rex cinema in Paris) that chronicles the creation of a contemporary Sistine Chapel by street artist Pascal Boyart in the center of an abandoned gold foundry in Paris suburbs, in what some may refer to as a cutthroat neighborhood.Directed by Yohann Grignou & Antoine Breuil, founders at Samouraï Coop, the movie was been funded with cryptocurrencies. During the premiere, the directors announced that their company Samourai Coop was already working on other films whose ownership will be shared with its community. These young filmmakers said it best, “If the cinema doesn’t open the door for us, we’ll go through the roof.”
The film tells the story of one of the most influential crypto-artists of his generation and tells the birth of a work that will probably remain in the next years as a masterful and historical work.
The film raises the question of the use of NFTs & cryptocurrencies in the service of real artists and not just pixel monkeys. Here, we witness in 1h17 a perfect demonstration of the interest in blockchain technologies, and this on two levels: The artist, who finances himself his work in this way, with stunning authenticity, and the film itself, which comes to stick perfectly to the work of the artist by also being financed in this way, and by making it free for all.
The documentary has received multiple awards and recognitions at different film festivals. Some of them are:
– London international monthly film festival 2021
– Florence film awards 2021
– CLIT 2021
– Tokyo international monthly film festival 2021
– Flickers’ Rhode Island International film festival 2021
– Arte nonstop festival/ BA 2022-International film & art festival 2021