This film made me want to seek out more of Marina's work. I especially liked the children who sat with Marina at the museum and have a feeling that the experience will stay with some of them for a lifetime. The reactions of some of the audience members at the museum are also quite strange and compelling. Collaborations and interviews with former husband Ulay are particularly poignant. It documents a 3 month retrospective of her work that was at the New York MOMA and not only shows details of what it was like to live through those three months, with recreations of many of her historical performances and Marina sitting in front of audience members all day every day, but also shows the back story regarding the work involved in putting something like that together, as well as details about her personal life that are fascinating. I had heard about Marina's work, read a few articles and seen a few photos, but this film put it all together and gave me the context that I never had before. All in all, the film has attest to that Weiwei is a true artist (he is not exploiting all the controversies to grandstand his art work) if nothing else, and by the way, if anyone who is really into Ai's artwork, this documentary is not recommended for you unless you have never heard of his ground-breaking SUNFLOWER SEEDS exhibition.I just saw this film at the San Francisco International Film Festival. With such a contentious figure, Klayman seems to choose a very conservative story-telling which is exuding from a sheer westerner's point-of-view (a lone fighter against the all-evil oriental and dictatorial institution, surely the truth is much more intricate as we all know), still a shred of information betrays Ai's hooliganism in his own tactic, which would arise more interest (at least for myself). Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is a portrait of a brave (or simply stubborn. One of the cats has figured out how to open the door and escape. The family card is an omnipotent weapon to probe a more personal facet of the artist himself (his illegitimate son has been briefly discussed here) which could induce empathy for every single viewer, however, this is a common-law generally fits under any similar context, the real Ai Weiwei is still elusive and taciturn. Ai lives in Beijing with his wife and around 40 cats and dogs. So if one is all familiar with the story, this documentary has rather little novel to offer, first- time director Alison Klayman covers a quite comprehensive range to introduce Ai's art, family and the (short but carefully-selected) comments from his friends and peers, but all falls short of incisiveness and compassion. Ai Weiwei is an internationally acclaimed Chinese artist-activist who is provocatively condemning his motherland government for grave social underbellies (in light of an unbalanced economy acceleration) as corruption nonfeasance and misfeasance among officials, systematic injustice, moral languor and freedom repression (a focal point is the aftermath of Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, whose casualties are over 80,000, among which are many children stayed inside shoddily-built school buildings) and valiantly spearheading (not the least in the artist field) a new wave of self-awakening among his fellow compatriots, which has promptly wrought government's mistreatment and investigations, all up to a somewhat "mysterious" disappearance during 2011 for half an year, then later ostensibly claimed by the Chinese government as a series of tax evasion interrogations of Ai's company, then subsequently Ai has been forbid to neither leave Beijing for one-year nor to speak about the matter.
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