Subtitles:

English, none

Extras:

Ai Weiwei is known for many things; €great architecture, subversive in-your-face art, and political activism. He has also called for greater transparency on the part of the Chinese state. Director Alison Klayman chronicles the complexities of Ai's life for three years, beginning with his rise to public prominence via blog and Twitter after he questioned the deaths of more than 5,000 students in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The record continues through his widely publicized arrest in Beijing in April of 2011. As Ai prepares various works of art for major international exhibitions, his activism heats up, and his run-ins with China's authorities become more and more frequent. In this unprecedented look at Ai and those close to him, Klayman's camera captures his forthrightness and unequivocal stance. She gives a larger picture of the artist as an individual, a symbol of China's oppression, and a powerful voice against a country that still denies its citizens many basic freedoms.

Alison Klayman’s film offers a lively and rounded view of Ai. She gained impressive access to him during 2010 and was able to draw on his archives and speak to his friends and followers, many of them artists themselves. There are talking-head interviews and biographical accounts of the influence of his father, the poet and political prisoner Ai Qing, as well as a section on the decade Ai spent in New York in the 1980s.

But it’s the reportage scenes, at home, in the studio or out and about with Ai, that prove most engaging. The film follows the artist as he tries to take legal action against the Chengdu police for assaulting him in 2009 during a 12-hour detention aimed at preventing him from testifying at the trial of Tan Zuoren, a fellow activist. Like Ai, Tan has campaigned for his government to reveal more about the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan. Also illuminating are scenes of Ai with his mother (‘Every night I can’t sleep,’ she says to him, crying. ‘I’m worried I won’t see you again’) and his young son, whom he admits he fathered outside his marriage.

Gary Tooze

October 7th, 2012