Friday 31 August 2012

Ai Weiwei - Never Sorry

Ai Weiwei Never Sorry is an inspiring documentary film about the Chinese dissident artist and activist Ai Weiwei. It follows the artist through several of his projects, including a memorial to victims of a major earthquake, his almost obsessive photographic recording of his life and his extensive activism on Twitter. For many years he seemed to escape the censorship and harassment that many of his contemporaries in China faced, but after being imprisoned last year he is currently unable to leave the country.

Ai Weiwei comes across as incredibly driven in his work, but with a great sense of humour. His studio is over-run with cats (the opening scene of the film shows Ai making a sculpture while a cat sprawls across it.)

This film is inspiring, showing how we can use art in well thought out activism to try and change the world, or to at least raise people's awareness.

Ai Weiwei, Never Sorry will be on at the Cameo cinema, Edinburgh next Tuesday 4 September.

As ever, text in red contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

3 comments:

ashok said...

seems like a gripping movie...

Tommaso Gervasutti said...

China and dissidents...I will never forget Tienamen square...and how I stood on the phone six-seven hours, I think it was June 1989 phoning various numbers in China, an Italian newspaper had provided the numbers, to intercept the authorities and make more difficult for them to trace dissidents after that terrible massacre in the night. I was angry, sad and outraged.

HKatz said...

I saw a preview for this when I watched another movie, Footnote. Many bad movies have good previews, but this one seemed genuinely good and gripping (and funny at times). I'm glad to read this positive review from you and plan to watch the movie at some point.