Movies: Ai Weiwei

In February 2019, the Hong Kong government proposed a bill that would have allowed the extradition of criminal suspects from Hong Kong to face trial in mainland China. The controversial bill sparked immediate outrage over widespread fear of arbitrary...

The Shanghai authorities rejected Feng Zhenghu, originated from Wenzhou, Jiejiang, China, from returning to the country for a total of eight times in 2009. On November 4, 2009, Feng Zhenghu attempted to return home for the ninth time but the police f...

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....

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 po...

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 ...

Ping’an yueqing investigates the 2010 death of Qian Yunhui, a village leader from Yueqing in the eastern province of Zhejiang, who died under suspicious circumstances that authorities deemed a road accident. The film recounts Qian’s death in which he...

As a sequel to Ai Weiwei’s film "Disturbing the Peace," the film "So Sorry" (named after the artist’s 2009 exhibition in Munich, Germany) shows the beginnings of the tension between Ai Weiwei and the Chinese Government. In "So Sorry," you see the inv...

Beijing: The Third Ring is a document of the two opposite views of traffic flow on 55 bridges along Beijing’s Third Ring. The entire piece is made up of 110 segments....

"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, whic...

Twenty years after China’s scandalous “Black Blood Economy,” when a million Chinese citizens were infected with HIV and countless died from AIDS, thousands of rural peasants still suffer the consequences, their plight hidden from the eyes of the worl...

"Ordos 100" provides a picture of an Ai Weiwei at the pinnacle of his artistic fame, but not yet in the political hot water that was to give him a different kind of notoriety. The film centers on a grand architecture project in Ordos, to be designed ...

Beijing 2003 is a video about the city that the artist lives in, and its people. Participants include assistants Liang Ye and Yang Zhichao, and driver Wu. The piece took 16 days to complete, starting on October 18, 2003. Beginning below the Dabeiyao...

At 14:28 on May 12, 2008, an 8.0-magnitude earthquake happened in Sichuan, China. Over 5,000 students in primary and secondary schools perished in the earthquake, yet their names went unannounced. In reaction to the government's lack of transparency,...

In August 2014, Ai Weiwei was invited as one of the participating artists for the Fukushima Nuclear Zone by the Japanese art coalition Chim↑Pom, as part of the project "Don't Follow the Wind". Ai accepted the invitation and sent his assistant Ma Yan ...

Fairytale chronicles the making of an installation-cum-performance of the same name. In 2007, Ai Weiwei invited 1001 Chinese citizens of varying ages and backgrounds to travel to Kassel, Germany, for one week each, all expenses paid. This film descri...

An uncomfortable encounter between the filmmaker and the famed artist....

Early in 2008, the district government of Jiading, Shanghai invited Ai Weiwei to build a studio in Malu Township, as a part of the local government's efforts in developing its cultural assets. By August 2010, the Ai Weiwei Shanghai Studio completed a...

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....

A short documentary about the making of "Straight" and "Forge" (2008-2012)....

There's a first time for everything, and thus Chinese multi-disciplinary artist Ai Weiwei set out to make his debut as an opera director, with an entire film crew following the meticulous preparations of this endeavour. Ai Weiwei's Turandot provides ...