Stay Home: Ai Weiwei Document’s Ximei’s Life & Activism

Recent revelations of toxic tear gas dispersed throughout Hong Kong and the network of concentration camps imprisoning hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs from East Turkistan prove the Chinese Communist Party is dangerous to human health. AIDS activist Liu Ximei knew that years ago. She was one of the thousands of Henan peasants who contracted the disease through tainted transfusion blood. However, she was not willing to meekly accept the substandard treatment grudgingly provided by state clinics. She organized patients, but that consequently made her a target, as viewers can see in Ai Weiwei’s Stay Home (written, lensed, and edited by Chen Shuo), which predates Andy Cohen & Gaylen Ross’s more complete documentary Ximei, but it still nicely compliments their film, which opens today in New York.

Hip New Yorkers may have already seen Stay Home, because the 2013 film played on a loop during Teacher Ai’s retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum. It is also readily available on YouTube and Vimeo, if you do not live on the Chinese side of the CCP’s Great Firewall.

Stay Home is somewhat less structured and more fly-on-the-wall in the manner it documents the day-to-day health challenges Liu must endure. It also covers a shorter time-span, ending before she becomes a legit couple with her roommate, a fellow AIDS patient. We also witness worse acts of harassment in the newer documentary, because the Henan cadres had the good sense to be on their best behavior when Ai Weiwei showed up with a camera crew. In contrast, Cohen and company do their best to stay undercover. Nevertheless, the apparatchiks’ hostility and resentment for Liu still comes through clearly.

Ximei: Profile in Courage

Liu Ximei is continuing proof of one of Mainland China’s dirtiest secrets (and the Communist Party certainly has a lot to choose from). In the 1990s, peasants in hardscrabble Henan province were encouraged to supplement their subsistence income selling blood. Tragically, unsafe sanitary practices led to widespread AIDS infection among both donors and recipients. Naturally, the Party tried to sweep it under the rug, because that is what they do. However, one brave young woman emerged as a leader for the rural AIDS patients, after she contracted the disease through a transfusion. Viewers will meet her and witness the powerful opposition she faces in Andy Cohen & Gaylen Ross’s Ximei, which opens tomorrow in New York.

Liu might be familiar to some viewers, because she was the subject of Ai Weiwei’s documentary, Stay Home. Those who have seen it will be reassured by Teacher Ai’s involvement as an executive producer of Cohen & Ross’s doc. We get to know her better as a flesh-and-blood person through their lens—and to know Liu is to admire her.

Many of Liu’s experiences are somewhat universal, with respect to her search for companionship and her eventual romance with a fellow Henan patient. However, her activism and humanitarianism often put her at odds with the police and health services bureaucracy. Believing in the efficacy of patient solidarity and support, Liu opened “Ximei’s Home for Mutual Help,” a shelter and resource for patients who cannot afford to regularly commute from their rural homes to the urban clinics. Of course, even when they show up, the doctors and nurses often refuse to see them in a timely manner, prompting Liu to lodge rather pointed complaints on their behalf. Frustratingly, but not so surprisingly, the police have regularly forced Liu to relocate her shelter.

Although Ximei is a more personal profile than Ai Weiwei’s film, it still covers sufficiently sensitive topics to get Cohen and his crew rousted by the police at least once. This is definitely gutsy, truth-to-power filmmaking, but the subject and star is truly courageous.

DOC NYC ’19: Ai Weiwei Yours Truly

Ai Weiwei has arguably succeeded Warhol and Picasso as the most recognizable artist of his times. He has also succeeded Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn as the most recognizable dissident of our current era. The Mainland Communist regime is less than thrilled about both scores. Ai’s dissidence (as well as that of his father before him clearly informs his art, as his curator Cheryl Haines clearly documents in Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly, which screens during this year’s DOC NYC.

For nearly three months, Ai was held incommunicado on bogus charged. He was then released, but placed under house and his passport was confiscated. It was under these circumstances Ai challenged Haines to help bring his art to an even greater international audience. Her idea to mount a site-specific show at the notorious Alcatraz island prison was fraught with complications, but the creative possibilities and symbolism fired Ai’s creative imagination. Much like banned Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi directing over the phone during his house arrest, Ai planned out the project from his Beijing workshop, relying on Haines to oversee the implementation on-site.

Clearly, the scale and historical significance of Alcatraz well-suited Ai’s art—perhaps better than most museums could. Patrons saw large scale installations that have been interpreted as tributes to the oppressed Tibetan people and his father, Chinese modernist poet Ai Qing, who was beaten, publicly humiliated, and ostracized during the Anti-Rightist Campaign.

Yet, the clear centerpiece of the show was “Yours Truly” that depicted Lego portraits of prisoners of conscience held at the time around the world and then invited patrons to write postcards to any of the subjects whose cases particularly moved them. However, Haines clearly focus on Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning as the centerpiece of the “Yours Truly” “dissidents,” which is problematic.

Museum Watching: The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg

Uli Sigg was like the Herb & Dorothy of contemporary Chinese art, but he was always a highly respected member of the economic and political establishment. Thanks to his special access, he was one of the first westerners to collect artists like Ai Weiwei during his early years in China as a businessman and diplomat. It turns out he also had a good eye for collecting. The reigning superstars of the international art world pay tribute to their Swiss friend and patron in Michael Schindhelm’s The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg (trailer here), which has several upcoming screenings around the country.

Ironically, when China first opened in the early 1980s, it was more open then than it is now. Sigg was one of handful of western businessmen allowed into the country to form joint-ventures. Frankly, as the representative of the Schindler Group (they manufacture elevators and escalators), Sigg wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing in Mainland China, but he managed to acquire and renovate an abandoned factory that became quite a profitable concern in its day.

Sigg also kept his eyes open and made plenty of contacts, so he was a logical choice to become Switzerland’s ambassador to China, Mongolia, and North Korea (interestingly, Hong Kong and Taiwan were not part of his remit). Having good diplomatic instincts, Sigg thought it would be a nice gesture if the Swiss embassy displayed the work of contemporary Chinese artists.

Sigg was a quick study and confident in his judgement, so he soon became a regular visitor to the studios of Ai Weiwei, Fang Lijun, Wang Guangyi, Cao Chong’en, and his daughter Cao Fei (also an interesting filmmaker), all of whom talk to Schindhelm at length. Today, we can barely afford to drop their names in a review, but Sigg was able to acquire important formative works from them. Yet, Sigg always planned to return a good portion of his collection to a museum that would keep it on view for the Chinese people. He found the right partner in M+, an innovative contemporary art museum currently under construction in Hong Kong. Hey, HK is totally part of China, right? Oh, sweet irony.

Ever the diplomat, Sigg is generally circumspect when it comes to addressing current or even historical controversies on camera. However, it seems telling how many artists he championed were profoundly influenced by traumatic experiences during the Cultural Revolution. Of course, that makes perfect sense, considering most of them were born in the early to mid-1960s, usually to middle class families. Indeed, the mere fact Sigg is one of Teacher Ai’s confidants says plenty.

The bald-pated, hawk-nosed Sigg also happens to be a heck of an attention-grabbing screen presence. The seventy-one-year-old is still razor-sharp and can remember with crystal clarity meetings with Deng Xiaoping and just about every other subsequently important government official.

If only more ambassadors were as engaged and far-sighted as Sigg (although the late, great Hon. Smith Hempstone’s tenure in Kenya remains the gold standard). Sigg amassed a remarkable collection, lived an accomplished life, and now finds himself the subject of a pretty strong documentary. Schindhelm keeps it moving along at a good clip and uncovers some fascinating and telling details. Recommended for China watchers and fine arts patrons, The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg screens tonight (10/10) in New York at the Asia Society and next Wednesday (10/18) at the Sloan Lake Denver Drafthouse, as part of their film/STILL series, presented in conjunction with the Clyfford Still Museum.

Cinema on the Edge: Ping’an Yueqing

Experts contend the greatest degree of corruption in American government happens at the local level, because that is where most land use decisions are made. Apparently, it is the same in China, but more lethally so. The late Qian Yunhui was a rare breed—a village chief who actually protested the government’s land appropriation schemes. That may very well be why he is now the late Qian Yunhui. Ai Weiwei and his filmmaking team investigate the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death in Ping’an Yueqing (trailer here), which screens as part of Cinema on the Edge, a retrospective tribute to the Beijing Independent Film Festival now playing in New York at Anthology Film Archives.

If you were still unclear how independent the Beijing Independent festival was and why the Communist government so resented their maverick programming, just start watching Ping’an Yueqing. Sadly, the village of Yueqing is anything but “peaceful.” Qian was imprisoned for over four years, but the village refused to elect another headman, because he was faithfully representing their concerns. Then one morning, Qian was conveniently struck and killed by a heavy truck owned and operated by the local power authority.

After an unseemly short investigation, Qian death was ruled an accident and his two deputies were arrested for obstruction of justice. Sensing a cover-up, the internet quickly took up the case. As the citizen investigators explain to Ai Weiwei, the traffic surveillance camera was ever so strangely offline for maintenance exactly during the so-called accident. However, video recorded by Qian’s smart-watch device (like his own, personal Zapruder film) did not match the description of the scene in police reports. The few eye witnesses willing to testify also contradict the official story in various ways. Yet, perhaps the most damning circumstantial evidence is the pattern of troublesome Zhejiang officials who were previously done in by similar traffic accidents.

Teacher Ai and his team do their best to put the dissembling officials on the spot. It is not always pretty, but the state mouthpieces generally conduct themselves more shrewdly than the apparatchiks in his classic Disturbing the Peace and So Sorry. However, the most disturbing sequences are the dozens of Yueqing villagers who tell Ai’s camera crews “if I talk to you, they will make me disappear tonight,” in exactly those terms. Regardless of the Qian case, this is obviously a profoundly ailing community, suffering from oppressive corruption.

Ping’an uses the same straight, unfiltered approach as seen in other Ai Weiwei documentaries, but in this particularly complicated case, it would have been helpful to have an on-camera presence to help marshal the often contradicting testimony and to occasionally provide context. Of course, Teacher Ai would have been perfect for such a role, but he is not inclined to inject himself into other people’s stories.

Regardless, Ping’an is a courageous example of independent filmmaking and investigative journalism. It shines a searing spotlight on a tawdry episode the Party would love the world to forget. Yet, thanks to Ai Weiwei and the Beijing Independent fest, cineastes who have never heard of Qian Yunhui will keep revisiting the events in Yueqing. A bold and chilling work of non-fiction filmmaking, Ping’an Yueqing is highly recommended for anyone who really wants to see what speaking truth to power really looks like when it screens tonight (8/9) and Thursday (8/13) at the Anthology Film Archives and as part of the forthcoming tour of the Cinema on the Edge retrospective.

Ai Weiwei in Shorts

The news cycle giveth and the news cycle taketh away. Just when Laura Poitras posted her latest piece of Edward Snowden brand management, news reports suggest he may have indeed done the one thing he absolutely, positively promised never to do: share sensitive intelligence with the Russian and Chinese governments. One wonders what Ai Weiwei would have to say about that? Regardless, it certainly casts his appearance in Poitras’s short in a different light. Freshly released as part of the New York Times Op-Doc series, Art of Dissent is one of two relatively recent short films available online, featuring Teacher Ai, the second being Jason Wishnow’s The Sand Storm, which can be found on Fandor.

Ai Weiwei’s Art of Dissent is one of his more conceptual works, conceived in collaboration with Wikileaks’ Jacob Appelbaum. As Poitras records the process, the artist and the activist replace the stuffing inside thirty plush pandas with shredded Snowden documents. Of course, Appelbaum points out the choicer passages, but there is no word whether information on Chinese dissidents like himself are included—and certainly not whether they were turned over to his Communist tormentors.

Poitras does indeed include descriptions of Ai’s punishing period of captivity, but Andreas Johnsen’s Ai Weiwei: the Fake Case is a far better source for insight on this period. Although Ai emerges as a principally consistent critic of intrusive government, he may later feel uncomfortable embracing Snowden and wikileaks. Unfortunately, it is easier to assume the worst about Snowden now, because Poitras refused to ask hard questions of him when she had the chance, like what does he think of the human rights records of his host countries and what role if any did the FSB play in bringing his girlfriend to Russia? By sticking to softballs, she did Snowden a grave disservice.

Wishnow’s The Sand Storm is also somewhat topical, since it depicts Ai as a Chinese water-smuggling Mad Max. Frankly, Wishnow’s film looks so much like a proof-of-concept short, it ought to end by saying: “to be continued with your money.” Regardless, Teacher Ai brings a quiet mischievousness to the proceedings as the dystopian lone wolf, while Bai Yao is absolutely terrific as the betrayed wife he takes under his wing. It would be great to see more of her and Ai in this world, but one wonders if his schedule (or the authorities) would permit feature-length shoots.

Highly recommended, The Sand Storm is a very cool way to kill ten minutes online at Fandor. More problematic, The Art if Dissent is still notable as part of the ever challenging Ai Weiwei oeuvre.

Ai Weiwei The Fake Case: A Portrait of the Artist Under House Arrest

It is the product of eighty-one days of solitary confinement and rough interrogation. Recreating scenes from his ordeal, S.A.C.R.E.D. is already recognized as one of Ai Weiwei’s masterworks, as well as a devastating critique of the Communist Party’s police state tactics. At least the government did its best to prevent any distractions from delaying its completion—by confiscating his passport and placing him under house arrest. The artist’s difficult year spent as a prisoner in his own home-studio (known as 258 FAKE) is documented in Andreas Johnsen’s Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York at the IFC Center.

Ai Weiwei is one of the most important artists in the world today, as his famous sunflower seed installation at the Tate Modern and the current retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum well attest. However, Teacher Ai claims he never initially set out to be a political artist, but was forced down that path by the government’s reaction to his work and activism. Those who have seen Alison Klayman’s Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry or Teacher Ai’s own films, particularly Disturbing the Peace and So Sorry, know the artist as a compulsively outspoken, larger than life figure. It is rather shocking to see the nearly (but not completely) broken Ai Weiwei who emerges from almost three months of illegal detention early in Fake.

As a condition of his so-called parole, Ai Weiwei is forbidden to speak with the media, particularly international reporters. He duly complies, at least for a while. Suffering from memory gaps and nightmares, Teacher Ai is literally a pale shadow of his former self. Yet, as his health returns that familiar spirit also perks up.

Once again, the Communist government provides an inadvertent assist, by requiring Teacher Ai to post a considerably bond during his appeal. Much to the artist’s stunned amazement, there is a massive outpouring of support on his behalf, as 100 Yuan note paper airplanes start sailing over his wall, at no small risk to the donors. Their heartfelt messages move him deeply. Frankly, if viewers do not get a little choked up at this point, they perhaps missed their true callings as Communist torturers (as sleep deprivation is widely acknowledged as a form of torture, it is indeed fair to say Teacher Ai was tortured while in custody).

Essentially, Fake picks up where Klayman’s documentary left off, making them excellent companion films. Of course, it is hard to go wrong with any film that captures Ai Weiwei being himself. Although we might expect Teacher Ai to be far more guarded on camera following his incarceration, the opposite appears to be true. Not only do hear him talking candidly about the lasting effects of his imprisonment, we also witness (quite touching) scenes of him interacting with his young son, Ai Lao.

Arguably, we see more of Ai the private citizen than Ai Weiwei the public figure. Of course, that rather makes sense, considering he could not leave his home without government permission during this time. Nevertheless, the injustice of his persecution is clearly and thoroughly established. Largely observational in his approach, Johnsen’s trust in his subject’s cinematic presence and compelling work (be it artistic, political, or both) pays off handsomely. A source of inspiration and outrage, Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case is highly recommended for all viewers who value free expression when it opens this Friday (5/16) at the IFC Center.

AIA’s Practical Utopias: The Bird’s Nest

Beijing National Stadium is the symbol of China’s Olympic PR triumph, but it was designed and built by two Swiss architects and a dissident artist.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the construction was almost as dramatic as the soaring finished structure.  Christoph Schaub & Michael Schindhelm follow the complicated process in their documentary, Bird’s Nest: Herzog & de Meuron in China (trailer here), which screened as part of the Practical Utopias programming at AIA New York’s Center for Architecture.

Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron had prospective projects in China fall through before, but they clearly did not let that inhibit their ambition.  In addition to the iconic Olympic venue, the architects were also planning an ambitious mixed-use urban development for the Jinhua district.  Five years later, the Bird’s Nest would be completed, but the Jinhua project still exists only on the drawing board. Frankly though, the Swiss architects did rather well for themselves, given the eccentricities of the Chinese bureaucracy.  For one thing, they carried on without ever having one of those whatamacalits: a contract.

Shrewdly, the Swiss architects recruited a prestigious team of local collaborators and advisors, most notably including Ai Weiwei, demonstrating their good taste if not exactly a determination to curry favor with Party apparatchiks.  For the establishment, they also called on the counsel of Dr. Uli Sigg, the former Swiss Ambassador, and several other academics and architects.

Happily, Ai Weiwei is his irrepressible self throughout, expressing rather mixed feelings about the whole Olympic appeal to “nationalism.”  It is too bad he is not around more. There are many telling encounters with state corruption, incompetence, and rampant CYA-ing in the film, but Schaub & Schindhelm show a pronounced editorial preference for scrupulously sober, academic moments.

Still, in many ways, Bird’s Nest offers an intriguing perspective on China’s go-go development.  At one point, the Swiss partners attend the opening of Architecture Park, a public park conceived by Ai Weiwei to showcase small creations of prominent world architects, including de Meuron.  It was envisioned to serve the residents of the as yet undeveloped Jinhua development, but instead it is a surreal Dahli World in the middle of nowhere.

The Center’s post-screening discussion also added helpful context on the issues involved, including post-Olympic development in host nations.  According to Thomas K. Fridstein, Executive Director of the Cunningham Group China, the Bird’s Nest has seen little use since the 2008 Games, aside from drawing a bit of tourist traffic.  However, it still looks great despite the lack of upkeep and will probably remain as it is, because of its tremendous symbolic value to the regime. 

Those contemplating a Chinese co-venture will probably find Bird’s Nest instructive and any screen time devoted to Teacher Ai is always worthwhile.  Recommended for those fascinated by the subject matter rather than general interest doc watchers, Schaub & Schindhelm’s Bird’s Nest is distributed by Icarus Films, so keep an eye on their website for future nonprofit screenings.

Chinese Realities: The Questioning (short)

When the cops show up to “inspect” your hotel room, it is a case of pure intimidation.  It is also something of a badge of honor in today’s China.  Film producer and festival impresario Zhu Rikun was the target of such a police roust, but he had the presence of mind to keep his camera rolling. His resulting short documentary The Questioning screens with Ai Weiwei’s thematically similar Disturbing the Peace as part of MoMA’s continuing Chinese Realities/DocumentaryVisions film series.

Evidently, it takes six cops to ask for Zhu’s papers.  Surely being familiar with Teacher Ai’s experience, Zhu handles himself masterfully.  He is distinctly uncooperative, but never gives them anything they could describe as provocative.  The entire episode degenerates into absurdist theater, with Zhu refusing to answers basic questions, instead referring his interrogators to the very documents they hold in their hands.  Viewers can well imagine the flustered enforcers reassuring themselves how badly they shook up Zhu once they retreat from his room.

Indeed, Questioning plays like a revised scene from the ill fated Chengdu trip in Disturbing, but unfortunately, Ai Weiwei and his team were not so deft at handling their harassers.  Teacher Wei would take a shot to the head, which would eventually led to a serious medical crisis, and his assistant would be held incommunicado in gross violation of ostensible law.

In her insightful post-screening Q&A, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry director Alison Klayman really put her finger on the phenomenon both films document.  Both Zhu and Teacher Ai could be so assertive in confrontations with authority figures, because there is no rule of law to govern such encounters.  As a result, the strongest personality has an advantage.  Ironically, that gives Teacher Ai the advantage.  Zhu is certainly no shrinking violet either.

Disturbing the Peace is a film everyone should watch to understand contemporary China.  Zhu’s The Questioning is also quite valuable.  It is short, but extremely telling.  One could argue he does not do much directing, per se, merely turning on the stationary camera his surprise guests never notice, but as a cinematic journalist, he is incredibly gutsy.  However, his overly large cast is lousy at taking direction.  Both highly recommended films screen together again (sans Klayman) this coming Saturday (6/1), concluding Chinese Realities at MoMA.

Profile in Courage: Ai Weiwei—Never Sorry

Having chosen the struggle for Chinese human rights over a life of privilege, Ai is arguably the world’s most important activist-artist.  Yet despite his international prominence (he even has an asteroid named after him), Ai faced a head-spinning array of specious charges trumped up by the Communist authorities.  Alison Klayman offers a timely documentary-profile in courage with the fascinating and infuriating Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York at the IFC Center.

Considering the recurring middle finger motif in Ai’s work, it s hardly surprising he is not a favorite of the regime.  Yet, there is more to Ai than mere symbolic defiance.  Klayman trenchantly traces the roots of Ai’s nonconformist spirit to the suffering his family experienced during the Cultural Revolution.  While Ai made some noise when he repudiated the Olympics, few could hear it within China.  However, his mastery of social media, specifically Twitter, would change all that.  Indeed, Ai and the legions of everyday Chinese citizens he inspired through Tweets ought to put everyone following vacuous celebrities like Ashton Kutcher to shame.

Most westerners should know Ai was held incommunicado for a long stretch by the police, but the projects that earned the artist the Communist government’s wrath may come as a revelation.  Most notable were his efforts to record each name of the thousands of school children who died during the Sichuan earthquake as a result of flimsy “tofu” school construction.  In any transparent society, this information would be in the public record, but in China all such efforts were explicitly forbidden.

There are scores of lessons to be found in Sorry, including the importance of documenting such tragedies for history, rather than letting the innocent victims of Sichuan fall through the Communist memory hole.  At times, Ai’s public criticisms of the regime are shockingly bold.  Clearly, his guts are made of steel-reinforced concrete.  Although Klayman largely focuses on his activism, she still conveys a vivid sense of Ai’s personality.  Partly this comes out through some shrewdly edited interview segments.  Yet more fundamentally, Ai just seems to be a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person.

Indeed, Klayman wisely focuses squarely on her subject.   As a documentarian, she is rather blessed Ai recorded so many of his protests and the subsequent government crackdowns for his social network followers.  His own documentaries Disturbing the Peace and So Sorry are staggering exposes in their own right, still quite findable on the internet and ardently recommended.  The word “controversial” should not really apply here.  What Ai says has happened, most definitely including a notorious police assault, really did go down.  He has the scars and the video to prove it.  Aside from some helpful context provided by talking heads and an innocuous score, Sorry is essentially Ai’s show—and appropriately so.

We want to call a film like Sorry “inspiring.”  It is a term that undeniably applies to Ai.  Unfortunately, though he might be out of immediate physical danger, Ai’s relative freedoms within contemporary China remain harshly curtailed, so viewers are likely to feel several conflicting emotions when the film ends.  Anger would be a good one to go with. 

This documentary is important, because the international spotlight must shine with far more intensity on Teacher Ai’s situation if circumstances are ever going to change.  Given the Chinese CP’s nasty habit of harassing their critics, Klayman also earns a fair amount of credit for having the guts to tackle this project in the first place.  Hopefully, she will have to produce a happy postscript for Sorry sometime in the future, but surely she would not begrudge the extra work. 

As it is, the efforts invested in Sorry are considerable.  One of two standout documentaries at this year’s Sundance (along with The Other Dream Team), Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry earns  a very high recommendation as well when it opens this Friday (7/27) in New York at the IFC Center.

Ai Weiwei not at YBCA: Disturbing the Peace & So Sorry

Arguably, Ai Weiwei is the single most important artist of our time.  One might expect the Chinese government to take pride in his international preeminence, but instead they are threatening him with specious bigamy and pornography indictments.  While best known for his architecture and large scale installations, he is also a filmmaker—and rather a muckraking one at that.  Indeed, it is easy to understand the Communist regime’s relentless campaign against Teacher Ai after viewing his fearless documentary investigations of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.  Defiantly exposing the hypocrisies of the Chinese justice system, Ai Weiwei’s Disturbing the Peace and So Sorry will screen as part of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ enormously timely retrospective, now underway in San Francisco.

Still prohibited from traveling, the artist will not be present for these screenings.  The series includes several of Ai’s films recording his ambitious artistic projects that are surely well worth your time and attention.  However, Disturbing and Sorry are particularly relevant to the legal purgatory he now finds himself in.  Following the 2008 quake, Teacher Ai and his assistants launched a campaign to tabulate an accurate death toll of the students killed by shoddy so-called “tofu” school construction and record each name.  Yet, every time they asked the authorities for fatality statistics, they were branded American or Japanese spies.

While both Sichuan documentaries cover overlapping events, Disturbing concentrates on Teacher Ai’s direct challenges to the government authorities.  As the film opens, Ai has returned to Chengdu to appear as a witness at the trial of Tan Zuoren, an independent researcher also investigating the Sichuan earthquake.  Denied his day in court, Ai and his party are rousted and detained by the police at three in morning.  Teacher Ai is physically assaulted and one of his assistants is ominously whisked away, without any pretense of due process.

Ai subsequently returns with the woman’s husband and Tan’s fearless attorney Pu Zhiqiang to demand answers.  Finally jumping through enough hoops to meet face-to-face with a reasonably high-ranking bureaucrat, Ai makes it plain they will not leave until they receive a satisfactory accounting.  Frankly, the meets gets rather ugly, with Ai dropping f-bombs and openly questioning the integrity of the man across from him.  He had a right to be irritable though, having not eaten for hours on end, as the apparatchiks stalled and dissembled.  Clearly, Ai and his colleagues believe the only hope they have of securing her release depends on them staying in that conference and in the authorities’ faces.  From what viewers see, they do not seem far wrong in their judgment.

So Sorry also covers the Sichuan earthquake and the scandalous aftermath, but the focus is slightly different.  We see more of the investigation itself and hear from some of the devastated parents, whose grief is compounded by China’s One Child policy.  While Ai again confronts agents of the state not so subtly surveilling him, the grim drama in Sorry centers around Ai’s cerebral hemorrhage resulting from the Chengdu attack, coming while he is in the midst of preparing a major exhibition in Germany.

Not surprisingly, Alison Klayman’s forthcoming documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry draws heavily on Ai’s Sichuan films.  However, if you have only seen the excerpts, you haven’t seen the half of it.  Disturbing the Peace is particularly staggering, as Ai “talks truth to power” in a way officialdom is most definitely not accustomed to.  Especially telling is the way he needles them with the Party’s own rhetoric.  It is also chilling to witness, knowing how dearly he will pay for his boldness.

It is hard to think of two braver, more revealing documentaries than Ai’s Sichuan films.  They are literally video dispatches from an Orwellian police state.  Viewed together, the two films conclusively establish tens of thousands of young lives were needless lost and those who ask questions will find themselves in serious jeopardy.  One would hardly expect them to meet with the Party’s approval, but they make it easy to understand why so many everyday Chinese citizens have rallied to support Teacher Wei during his Kafkaesque ordeal. 

Immeasurably important for understanding contemporary China, Disturbing the Peace screens this Sunday (7/15) as part of the YBCA’s Ai Weiwei series.  Recommended nearly as earnestly, So Sorry screens the following Sunday (7/22) as part of a double bill with Ordos 100, Teacher Ai’s record of a yet unfinished architectural project in Mongolia.  More than just topical programming, the YBCA deserves great credit for keeping Ai Weiwei and his work, both the political and the artistic, in the public eye at this critical period of time.

Sundance ’12: Ai Weiwei—Never Sorry

Ai Weiwei’s distinctive “Bird’s Nest” design for the Beijing National Stadium was one of the defining images of the 2008 Olympics, but Ai sought to redefine the Beijing games, forcefully decrying the tremendous suffering they caused for China’s vulnerable underclass. Choosing the struggle for Chinese human rights over a life of privilege, Ai is arguably the world’s most important activist-artist, whom Alison Klayman profiles in the fascinating and infuriating Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (trailer here), which screens at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival well underway in Park City.

Considering the recurring middle finger motif in Ai’s work, it s hardly surprising he is not a favorite of the regime. Yet, there is more to Ai than mere symbolic defiance. Klayman trenchantly traces the roots of Ai’s nonconformist spirit to the suffering his family experienced during the Cultural Revolution. While Ai made some noise when he repudiated the Olympics, few could hear it within China. However, his mastery of social media, specifically Twitter, would change all that. Indeed, Ai and the legions of everyday Chinese citizens he inspired through Tweets ought to put everyone following vacuous celebrities like Ashton Kutcher to shame.

Most westerners should know Ai was recently held incommunicado for a long stretch by the police, but the projects that earned the artist the Communist government’s wrath may come as a revelation. Most notable were his efforts to document each name of the thousands of school children who died during the Sichuan earthquake as a result of flimsy “tofu” school construction. In any transparent society, this information would be in the public record, but it China all such efforts were explicitly forbidden.

There are scores of lessons to be found in Sorry, including the importance of recording such tragedies for history, rather than letting the innocent victims of Sichuan fall through the Communist memory hole. At times, Ai’s public criticisms of the regime are shockingly bold. Clearly, his guts are made of steel-reinforced concrete. Although Klayman largely focuses on his activism, she still conveys a vivid sense of Ai’s personality. Partly this comes out through some shrewdly edited interview segments. Yet more fundamentally, Ai just seems to be a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person.

Indeed, Klayman wisely focuses squarely on her subject. As a documentarian, she is rather blessed Ai recorded so many of his protests and the subsequent government crackdowns for his social network followers. The word “controversial” should not really apply here. What Ai says has happened, most definitely including a notorious police assault, really did go down. He has the scars and the video to prove it. Aside from some helpful context provided by talking heads and an innocuous score, Sorry is essentially Ai’s show—and appropriately so.

We want to call a film like Sorry “inspiring.” It is a term that undeniably applies to Ai. Unfortunately, though he might be out of immediate physical danger, Ai’s relative freedoms within contemporary China remain harshly curtailed, so viewers are likely to feel several conflicting emotions when the film ends. Anger would be a good one to go with.

This documentary is important, because the international spotlight must shine with far more intensity on his situation if circumstances are ever going to change. Given the Chinese CP’s nasty habit of harassing their critics, Klayman also earns a fair amount of credit for having the guts to tackle this project in the first place. Hopefully, she will have to produce a happy postscript for Sorry sometime in the future, but surely she would not begrudge the extra work.

As it is, the efforts invested in Sorry are considerable. One of two standout documentaries at this year’s Sundance (along with The Other Dream Team, review to come), the earnestly recommended Sorry screens again this Thursday (1/26) and Saturday (1/28) in Park City, Friday (1/2/7) in Sundance Resort, and today (1/25) in Salt Lake.