HBO to Premiere Documentary on French Street Artist JR, 5/20

Known for billboard-sized photographic portraits of everyday people in urban settings, French street artist JR has a simple call to action: "Tell me what you stand for, and together we'll turn the world inside out." To transform his idea into reality, he created the Inside Out Project, the world's largest participatory art project and a remarkable testament to the power of the image and the role art can play in transforming lives.

Directed by Alastair Siddons, the thought-provoking documentary INSIDE OUT: THE PEOPLE'S ART PROJECT explores this groundbreaking global art movement when it debuts MONDAY, MAY 20 (9:00-10:15 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO.

Other HBO playdates: May 20 (2:40 a.m.), 23 (2:15 p.m.), 25 (11:15 a.m. ET, 4:15 p.m. PT) and 29 (5:30 p.m., 12:15 a.m.), and June 2 (1:00 p.m.) and 5 (5:10 a.m.)

HBO2 playdates: May 22 (8:00 p.m., 4:55 a.m.) and 28 (11:00 a.m.), and June 21 (8:00 a.m.)

JR began photographing his friends illegally painting their names ("tagging") in the metro and on roofs and later pasted the prints in the streets of Paris in 2001, saying that was when he learned "the power of paper and glue." JR himself remains anonymous; his full name is unknown and he always wears sunglasses and a fedora in public and on camera.

The 2011 winner of the prestigious TED Prize, given annually to an extraordinary individual with a creative and bold vision to spark global change, JR was granted initial funding to make "a wish to change the world." The resulting Inside Out Project empowers people across the globe, often in perilous and politically unstable environments, to create their own photographic messages.

In his Paris studio, JR explains how Inside Out works: People take photo portraits - no logos or hate messages allowed - and send them to him. He then prints giant versions of the images for free and sends them back. "It's up to them to paste it up in a place with meaning," he notes. These exhibitions are documented, archived and viewable virtually at insideoutproject.net.

INSIDE OUT: THE PEOPLE'S ART PROJECT follows the globetrotting JR as he motivates communities to define their most important causes by pasting large portraits in the streets and testing the limits of what they thought possible. To date, over 130,000 people have sent photos to Inside Out, pasting the enlargements in more than 10,000 locations in more than 100 countries, including Brazil, Tunisia, Pakistan, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, France and the U.S.

The film offers glimpses of the everyday challenges facing individuals in some of the world's most economically depressed and volatile areas, showing how Inside Out provides a means of self-expression and a way for people who have been invisible to feel recognized.

The film was an official Documentary Feature Spotlight selection at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival.

Presented in Arabic, Creole, English, French and Spanish with English subtitles, INSIDE OUT: THE PEOPLE'S ART PROJECT shows that whatever the language, people can be united by photography, art and the desire for self-expression.

For more information, visit: Facebook: facebook.com/hbodocs; and Twitter: @HBODocs #InsideOut.

INSIDE OUT: THE PEOPLE'S ART PROJECT was directed by Alastair Siddons; produced by Emile Abinal; editor, Gregor Lyon; executive producers, Marco Berrebi, Jane Rosenthal, Leo Haidar and Sol Guy; co-producer, Guillaume Lefrancois; original music, Antonio Pinto; cinematographer, Patrick Ghiringhelli. For HBO: consulting editor, Geof Bartz; supervising producer, Sara Bernstein; executive producer, Sheila Nevins.

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