As we celebrate 2012 in film, it's fitting that we honor movies that affirm the very liberty that makes our art, our traditions of free speech, and our democratic form of government possible.
There is a rising middle class with fixed or declining social freedoms, and a history of imperialism running back thousands of years. Yet people like Ai Weiwei risk their lives, their family, all security, to speak. What's our excuse?
As you celebrate this holiday season, be sure to save your digital memories by printing them out or backing them up. And beyond that, do everything you can to speak out for internet freedom.
This week, the Public Theater in New York played host to an impressive group of artists and writers including Salman Rushdie and Carl Bernstein. "Thou...
In "Weiwei-isms," we see Ai Weiwei at his best; the upcoming pocket-sized account on Princeton University Press features nearly 150 pages of the Chine...
It is too easy to be overly influenced by the brutal daily news stories of radical assaults on freedom in this part of the world, and to form a conviction that the Arab Spring was little more than a sudden and very short-lived breath of fresh air.
WASHINGTON -- Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who helped design Beijing's Olympic Stadium and has since drawn tough scrutiny for his political activism, is ...
Yesterday, Chinese artist and political dissident Ai Weiwei announced that authorities have revoked the business license for his design company in Bei...
This week things got hot and heavy on the Arts & Culture page as people were peeved about "Piss Christ," perfected their Psy pony dance and learned th...
Artist and activist Ai Weiwei has severely criticized the exhibition "Art of Change: New Directions from China," which opened last week at the Hayward...
Every society has constraints that offer opportunity for vision, freedom and courage. "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry" by Alison Klayman is a documentary about a man who appreciates the possibilities and challenges of this opportunity in China.
Artist Ai Weiwei could have had a career and a life that was easy. Maybe. After viewing Alison Klayman's documentary, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, it is clear that the story of his family's personal history looms large as a psychological undertone of his evolution.
Where to go to escape the heat? My suggestion for a very cool film is Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, a documentary about Chinese artist/provocateur Ai Weiwei.
The lines between art, journalism, and documentary filmmaking are often blurry ones. In 2008, director Alison Klayman, at the age of 24, found herself crossing those hazy lines to record the story of a man famous for doing the same.
Alison Klayman, an American and recent college grad in 2008 went to China, not knowing precisely what she would do there. Asked to videotape Ai Weiwei, she fell into a subject much larger than a sculptor and conceptual artist.
Few Americans are overly familiar with Ai Weiwei. With her engaging, intimate, and wholly personalizing portrait, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, director Alison Klayman hopes to right that wrong.
This is the least of Hollywood's worries, for my money. The major studios have a bigger problem -- such as the fact that they so seldom make movies with serious themes or content. And they never address actual political issues if they can avoid it.
What if you live in a society where the very ideas you harbor are punishable by imprisonment -- or worse? How much of being an artist becomes about simply having the courage to express your ideas in verbal or physical form?