Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei

Born: August 28, 1957
in Beijing, China
Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist and activist. Ai grew up in the far north-west of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile. As an activist, he has been openly critical of the Chinese Government's stance on democracy and human rights. He investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal following the collapse of schools in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In 2011, Ai Weiwei was arrested at Beijing Capital International Airport on 3 April, for allegedly economic crimes. He was detained for 81 days without charge. Ai Weiwei emerged as a vital instigator in Chinese cultural development, an architect of Chinese modernism, and one of the nation's most vocal political commentators. Ai Weiwei encapsulates political conviction and his personal poetry in his many sculptures, photographs and public works. In doing this, he makes use of Chinese art forms to display the Chinese political and social issues. After being allowed to leave China in 2015, he has lived in Berlin, Germany, and, since 2019, in Cambridge, UK, with his family, working and traveling internationally.

Movies for Ai Weiwei...

Free to Create - Artists in Exile
Title: Free to Create - Artists in Exile
Character: Himself
Released: February 13, 2024
Type: Movie
Artists forced to leave their country talk about the ambivalence of exile. With Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, Sudanese graphic designer Anwar, and members of the Russian feminist protest group Pussy Riot.
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Clockwork Orange: The Prophecy
Title: Clockwork Orange: The Prophecy
Character: Himself
Released: November 8, 2023
Type: Movie
Examines and re-evaluates the 60-year history and cultural impact of A Clockwork Orange, as a novel, movie and stage play, with the help of archival content and interviews with important creative figures.
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Title: Laogai: Prison Nation - Inside China's Ruling System
Character: Self - Interviewee
Released: March 28, 2023
Type: TV
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Mao Tsetung established a system of labor camps for systematic repression, known as Laogai, an abbreviation for "Reform Through Labor". In such camps, forced labor and physical and mental torture were used to bring about a so-called mental reform, re-education in the spirit of the Chinese Communist Party. Millions of Chinese were affected. Many were executed. In hundreds of camps, the Party took advantage of the prisoners' free labor to build the economy. Self-criticism and denunciation were often the only way to escape martyrdom. Successive waves of purges culminated in the Cultural Revolution, which saw massive human rights abuses, political assassinations, massacres, and exiles in remote parts of the country. Using unreleased archive footage, the documentary tells the story of the invention, development and improvement of China's totalitarian system of surveillance and repression up to the present day, never told before.
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Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War
Title: Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War
Released: July 1, 2022
Type: Movie
One of Britain’s greatest landscape artists, Eric Ravilious, is killed in a plane crash while on commission as Official War Artist in Iceland in 1942. His life is as compelling and enigmatic as his art, set against the dramatic wartime locations that inspire him. This film brings to life this unique and still grossly undervalued British artist caught in the crossfire of war 80 years ago, whose legacy largely sank without trace, until now…
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Ithaka
Title: Ithaka
Character: Self
Released: April 21, 2022
Type: Movie
The campaign to free Julian Assange takes on intimate dimensions in this documentary portrait of an elderly man’s fight to save his son. Arguably the world’s most famous political prisoner, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a figure pretty much everybody has an opinion about; perhaps more importantly, he serves as the emblem of an international arm wrestle over freedom of journalism, government corruption and unpunished war crimes. For his family members who face the prospect of losing him forever to the abyss of the US justice system, however, this David-and-Goliath struggle is personal – and, with his health declining in a British maximum-security prison and American government prosecutors pulling out all the stops to extradite him, the clock is ticking.
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Title: Aux arts et cætera
Character: Self
Released: February 11, 2022
Type: TV
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Vincent van Gogh Superstar
Title: Vincent van Gogh Superstar
Character: Himself
Released: November 5, 2019
Type: Movie
Documentary about famous painter Vincent van Gogh.
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Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies
Title: Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies
Released: April 28, 2019
Type: Movie
From ancient cave paintings to Twitter feeds and deep fakes, propaganda's rapid progression hasn't compromised its potency. Tracing its effective use by religious figures, politicians and marketers, director Larry Weinstein crafts a persuasive study of the mechanics behind propaganda. This fascinating investigation confronts us with timely questions: If we grow up surrounded by propaganda, how do we know what is true? What risks are inherited by a society tricked into their perceptions? Freedom of speech is critical to a democracy's survival, yet demagogues have consistently exploited that freedom to coerce willing supporters. Contemporary artists, including Kent Monkman, Shepard Fairey and Ai Weiwei, analyze their politically motivated work, creatively co-opting the conventions of disinformation that have permeated their respective cultures. As our platforms for spreading ideas continue to expand in a digital age, dangerous lies have never been better disguised.
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Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly
Title: Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly
Character: Self
Released: April 14, 2019
Type: Movie
Ai Weiwei, famous for his large-scale installation work and his dogged social justice advocacy, created a career-defining work in 2015 with @Large, mounted at Alcatraz, the emblematic site associated with egregious incarceration conditions and radical Native American protest. At the core of @Large were portraits of prisoners of conscience coupled with the opportunity to write letters of solidarity to the imprisoned. In her impassioned and powerful film, exhibition curator Cheryl Haines visits several current and former prisoners, including American whistleblower Chelsea Manning, and learns how these letters were vital to their survival. “The misconception of totalitarianism is that freedom can be imprisoned. This is not the case. When you constrain freedom, freedom will take flight and land on a windowsill.” — Ai Weiwei
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The Rest
Title: The Rest
Released: March 22, 2019
Type: Movie
Europe's refugees are met at eye level in a film by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who defends the ideals of humanism in the midst of the crisis.
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Why Are We Creative?: The Centipede's Dilemma
Title: Why Are We Creative?: The Centipede's Dilemma
Character: Self
Released: September 7, 2018
Type: Movie
A 30 years odyssey: the world's most intriguing artists and thinkers from the fields of visual art, music, filmmaking, acting, literature, philosophy, politics, business and science, are asked the same question: "Why are you creative?"
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Title: Firing Line with Margaret Hoover
Released: June 22, 2018
Type: TV
Join author, activist and commentator Margaret Hoover for a public affairs talk show that delivers a civil and engaging contest of ideas among the brightest minds and voices from across the ideological spectrum.
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Ai Weiwei en Buenos Aires
Title: Ai Weiwei en Buenos Aires
Character: Himself
Released: January 15, 2018
Type: Movie
The documentary registers with detail this first visit to Argentina. It's a meditation on the artistic and conceptual processes that Ai Weiwei needs to think of his art. The images dialogue between the director and his instagram, revealing an intimate side, close to the people.
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The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg
Title: The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg
Released: August 3, 2017
Type: Movie
Swiss collector Uli Sigg has played in the time of economic opening of China by Mao an essential role, which is still continuing. To better understand China, in 1980 as an entrepreneur and business expert to the country called Sigg art turns to and wears for years the most important collection of contemporary Chinese art together. THE CHINESE LIVES OF ULI SIGG granted for the first time a comprehensive insight into the exciting and extraordinary life of the entrepreneur, diplomat and art collector. Contemporary artists like Ai Weiwei, Zeng Fanzhi, Cao Fei, Fang Lijun Wang Guangyi or consider him a friend and mentor to whom they could entrust their works, to protect them against the arbitrary destruction of the authorities. The majority of them are over the Sigg museum M + in Hong Kong, which expected to open in 2019 and the works will be presented to the general public.
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Ai Weiwei Drifting
Title: Ai Weiwei Drifting
Character: Self
Released: June 13, 2017
Type: Movie
Ai Weiwei is a global star and an enigma. DW followed him for a year for this intimate portrait. The film shows Ai Weiwei at home, at work, and on the road for work, as he prepares his latest series of works focused on refugees and their fates.
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Title: Artsnight
Character: Self
Released: March 6, 2015
Type: TV
An art magazine show guest-edited by a different personality each week.
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Flowers of Taipei: Taiwan New Cinema
Title: Flowers of Taipei: Taiwan New Cinema
Character: Self
Released: October 1, 2014
Type: Movie
With Taiwan remaining in the grip of martial law in 1982, a group of filmmakers from that country set out to establish a cultural identity through cinema and to share it with the world. This engaging documentary looks at the movement's legacy.
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Ai Weiwei - Evidence
Title: Ai Weiwei - Evidence
Character: Himself
Released: September 1, 2014
Type: Movie
Documentary about artist Ai Weiwei's 2014 exhibition in Berlin.
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The Sand Storm
Title: The Sand Storm
Released: August 30, 2014
Type: Movie
In the not-quite end-times, a woman, a man, a lover and a water smuggler navigate a tumultuous future city on the brink of a water shortage. A "low-fi sci-fi film" secretly made in China.
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Ai Weiwei's Appeal ¥15,220,910.50
Title: Ai Weiwei's Appeal ¥15,220,910.50
Character: Self
Released: January 23, 2014
Type: Movie
Ai Weiwei’s Appeal ¥15,220,910.50 opens with Ai Weiwei’s mother at the Venice Biennial in the summer of 2013 examining Ai’s large S.A.C.R.E.D. installation portraying his 81 day imprisonment. The documentary goes onto chronologically reconstruct the events that occurred from the time he was arrested at the Beijing airport in April 2011 to his final court appeal in September 2012. The film portrays the day-to-day activity surrounding Ai Weiwei, his family and his associates ranging from consistent visits by the authorities, interviews with reporters, support and donations from fans, and court dates. The Film premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam on January 23, 2014.
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Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case
Title: Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case
Released: November 30, 2013
Type: Movie
After 81 days of solitary detention world famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is put under house arrest. He suffers from sleeping disorder and memory loss, 18 cameras are monitoring his studio and home, police agents follow his every move, and heavy restrictions from the Kafkaesque Chinese authorities weigh him down. Journalists, the art world and his family all want a piece of him and on top of that he is met with a gigantic lawsuit from the Chinese government, soon to be named 'The Fake Case'. Ai Weiwei is shaken, but during the year on probation he steadily finds new ways to provoke and challenge the mighty powers of the Chinese authorities in his fight for human rights. Ai Weiwei strongly believes that China is ready for change. And he will do everything to make it happen.
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KUN 13: Criticizing Ai Weiwei and Wu Haohao
Title: KUN 13: Criticizing Ai Weiwei and Wu Haohao
Character: Himself
Released: August 21, 2012
Type: Movie
An uncomfortable encounter between the filmmaker and the famed artist.
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Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
Title: Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
Character: Self - Artist
Released: June 14, 2012
Type: Movie
An account of the many tribulations that Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, known for his subversive art and political activism, endured between 2008 and 2011, from his rise to world fame via the Internet to his highly publicized arrest due to his frequent and daring confrontations with the Chinese authorities.
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Ai Weiwei: Without Fear or Favour
Title: Ai Weiwei: Without Fear or Favour
Released: November 16, 2010
Type: Movie
Arts documentary, first broadcast before Ai Weiwei's arrest by the Chinese authorities in April 2011, and his subsequent release after being detained for 11 weeks. Architect, photographer, curator and blogger, Ai Weiwei is China's most famous and politically outspoken contemporary artist. Alan Yentob explores the story of Ai Weiwei's life and art, and reveals how this most courageous and determined of artists continues to fight for artistic freedom of expression while living under the restrictive shadows of authoritarian rule.
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Disturbing the Peace
Title: Disturbing the Peace
Character: Self
Released: December 31, 2009
Type: Movie
"Disturbing the Peace" is a documentary of an incident during Tan Zuoren's trial on August 12, 2009. Tan Zuoren was charged with inciting subversion of state power. Chengdu police detained witnessed during the trial of the civil rights advocate, which is an obstruction of justice and violence. Tan Zuoren was charged as a result of his research and questioning regarding the 5.12 Wenchuan students' casualties and the corruption resulting poor building construction. Tan Zuoren was sentenced five years to prison.
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Little Girl's Cheeks
Title: Little Girl's Cheeks
Released: December 31, 2009
Type: Movie
On December 15, 2008, a citizens' investigation began with the goal of seeking an explanation for the casualties of the Sichuan earthquake that happened on May 12, 2008. The investigation covered 14 counties and 74 townships within the disaster zone, and studied the conditions of 153 schools that were affected by the earthquake. By gathering and confirming comprehensive details about the students, such as their age, region, school, and grade, the group managed to affirm that there were 5,192 students who perished in the disaster. Among a hundred volunteers, 38 of them participated in fieldwork, with 25 of them being controlled by the Sichuan police for a total of 45 times. This documentary is a structural element of the citizens' investigation.
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Title: The Daily Show
Character: Self
Released: July 22, 1996
Type: TV
The World's Fakest News Team tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and pop culture.
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Title: Bambi Awards
Character: Self
Released: January 1, 1948
Type: TV
The Bambi, often called the Bambi Award and stylised as BAMBI, is a German award presented annually by Hubert Burda Media to recognize excellence in international media and television to personalities in the media, arts, culture, sports, and other fields "with vision and creativity who affected and inspired the German public that year", both domestic and foreign. First held in 1948, it is the oldest media award in Germany. The trophy is named after Felix Salten's book Bambi, A Life in the Woods and its statuettes are in the shape of the novel's titular fawn character. They were originally made of porcelain until 1958, when the organizers switched to using gold, with the casting done by the art casting workshop of Ernst Strassacker in Süßen.