Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly (2019)
- Genre
- documentary film, biographical film
- Country
- United States
- Rating
- 8.8 of 10 from 2 voters
- Elsewhere
- IMDb
The catalogue in 3D
The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.
How it feels
This documentary follows artist Ai Weiwei as he creates an art exhibition at Alcatraz prison. It shows how he worked remotely because the Chinese government would not let him travel. The film includes interviews with Ai Weiwei and his mother about their family's past exile and looks at human rights issues around the world.
reflectivesobercontemplativeinformativepersonalseriousthoughtfulrestrained
What happens
Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly is a 2019 American documentary film about the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, and his art exhibition at Alcatraz, a former prison on an island near San Francisco, California, USA. The documentary covers the creation of the exhibition @Large:Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz, a 2014 project that was shown at Alcatraz, with multiple exhibits, including Trace, which featured political prisoners around the world as lego portraits. At this time, Ai Weiwei still had his passport withheld by the Chinese government, so foreign travel was not possible for him and he had to create the exhibition remotely. The exhibition came about through contact with the San Francisco curator and gallerist Cheryl Haines. The film considers human rights. Interviews with Ai Weiwei and his mother demonstrate the psychological effect of the family's exile in the 1950s to a labor camp in northeast China. The exhibition had two main parts. "Trace" was a room with portraits on the floor of 176 people that had imprisoned for their beliefs, created in bright colors using Lego bricks. The second room, "Yours Truly", enabled visitors to write postcards to some of the imprisoned people, which were later sent by mail to the prisoners where this was possible. The film includes interviews with Chelsea Manning, a former United States Army intelligence analyst who leaked military and diplomatic documents in 2010, originally sentenced to 35 years imprisonment by the US government, and John Kiriakou, a former US CIA agent who revealed the CIA's use of torture, especially waterboarding, and imprisoned by the US government during 2013–15 at the time of the exhibition. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
More like this
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Ai Weiwei The Fake Case (2013)
Human Flow (2017)
Spielberg (2017)
Vivos (2020)
Beijing Spring (2021)
Drain Alcatraz (2017)
Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang (2016)- More like this film, on a shelf you can walk up to.It's the lit case on the top shelf.