Bank Job

"These art avengers...took on toxic debt culture—and won."—The Guardian

"[They] want to blow up the whole financial system."—The New York Times

Art hacks life when two filmmakers launch a project to cancel more than £1m of high-interest debt from their local community.

Bank Job is a white-knuckle ride into the dark heart of our financial system, in which filmmaker and artist duo Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn risk their sanity to buy up and abolish debt by printing their own money in a disused bank in Walthamstow, London. Tired of struggling in an economic system that leaves creative people on the fringes, the duo weave a different story, both risky and empowering, of self-education and mutual action. Behind the opaque language and defunct diagrams, they find a system flawed by design but ripe for hacking. This is the inspiring story of how they listen and act upon the widespread desire to change the system to meet the needs of many and not just the few. And for those among us brave enough, they show how we can do this too in our own communities one bank job at a time.

Hilary Powell’s work ranges from audio-visual epics, supported by Acme and Henry Moore Foundation, to print works collected by V&A and MoMA. She has a track record of involving diverse communities in making – from public participation in the production of a pop-up book of the Lower Lea Valley to large-scale print collaborations with demolition workers and material scientists as ‘alchemist in residence’ at UCL Chemistry.

Dan Edelstyn is an experienced film director and producer with multiple commissions for Channel 4. His first film How to Re-Establish a Vodka Empire was critically acclaimed and opened at BFI London Film Festival before being released across the UK and US.

As a duo, their fearless and curious work comes together in Optimistic Foundation CIC, a platform investigating and tackling urgent economic, philosophical and social issues of our time through anarchic, joyful cultural production. They believe in the subversive, radical imagination’s ability to open up possibilities of more just ways of organising and living when everyday life and democracy are corroding.