Film Chat - 「艾未未 草泥馬」
Ai Wei-Wei Never Sorry
2/19/14
In response to Henry's comments on the documentary title, the following is my response:
I echo most of your points of view particularly in the decision of where to place Ai as an artist or as a dissident. He is more of a dissident than an artist in my opinion. People go to his exhibits because he is a famous dissident (from China where you don't hear much of him through official channels.) His art standing alone is not much, the few shown in this film are good but not great, some of them are more sensational than artistic to my layperson eyes.
Another point of yours is that some key persons (especially the wife) are not dealt with in depth in this docu film. You mentioned another film "Jiro Dreams Sushi" with similar problem. In our discussion of this film ( Our club also watched this film last spring ) some of the participants mentioned that the wife was completely left out in the film. The reason we knew he has a wife is because a family photograph shown somewhere in the film. Another documentary we watched last spring is "KJ - a musical life" where the mother of the young piano prodigy never made an appearance in the film (she was divorced from the father only in recent year.) One explanation by some viewers is that she may have chosen not to be interviewed or included in the film production. I wonder whether that is true for "Jiro" but certainly not in "Ai."
Just another cent or two from me.
Grace
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