Directed by Cheryl Haines, Gina Leibrecht (co-director)

Documentary Feature / USA / 78 mins

Strand: Arty

UK Premiere

Screening: Sat, 28 Sep 2019 18:00 | Sun, 29 Sep 12:15

Review:

In 2011, Chinese authorities imprisoned one of the world’s most acclaimed artists and activists: Ai Weiwei. Locked away for 81 days for his vocal outcries against the Chinese government’s flagrant human rights abuses, this imprisonment came to define his artistic output in the following years. Trapped in China following his release – he was not permitted a passport – he liaised with curator and director Cheryl Haines to create an exhibition that crystalised his experience of incarceration. His main feeling was one of distinct isolation – as such, the exhibition would encourage visitors to write postcards to various political prisoners throughout the world.

This visitors did, in their thousands. Haines’s documentary not only explores the exhibition itself and its origins – a unique opportunity to see Ai Weiwei’s work from afar – but also delves into the effect his work had on the many political prisoners featured in the exhibition, to whom postcards were sent. These included John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer imprisoned for revealing U.S. torture atrocities; Ahmed Maher, Egyptian activist locked away for protesting; and Chelsea Manning, who was infamously indicted for revealing reams of U.S. state secrets. Their responses to the thousands of postcards speak to the power of art: such exhibitions can bring together the activists of the world. / Review by Milo Garner

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Credits:

Director: Cheryl Haines, Gina Leibrecht (co-director)

Producer: Christy McGill, Cassandra Jabola

Executive Producers: Neda Nobari Foundation, Robert J. Louie Memorial Fund, Gene & Johanna Felder, Meridee Moore & Kevin King, Sonja & Jonathan Perkins, Sheila Duignan & Mike Wilkins

Writers: Sharon Wood, David Spalding

Cast: Ai Weiwei, Chelsea Manning, John Kiriakou, Ahmed Maher, Alexandra Munroe