Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly
Asheville viewers of Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly may be reminded of the site-specific artwork of American Mel Chin, who last year worked with students at UNC Asheville to create an installation for New York’s Times Square. Yours Truly chronicles a similar long-distance art project: Chinese artist and prominent dissident Ai Weiwei’s 2014 overlay in the halls and cells of Alcatraz, the long-closed island prison in San Francisco Bay. It was put together during the period immediately after Ai’s brief incarceration by the Chinese government, when he was essentially under house arrest. (He’s now permitted limited travel but remains under constant surveillance.)
The Alcatraz installation, titled Ai Weiwei: @Large, was an elaborate and beautiful creation honoring prisoners of conscious from across the globe and expressing more general sentiments about freedom, culture, and human connection. It’s well worth your time to watch the enormous effort that went into its construction and to explore it virtually (it was dismantled in 2015). The details of the work — for example, the creative medium used to build 175 portraits of the unjustly imprisoned — viewers should discover for themselves.
Yours Truly is not an objective documentary, however, but an extension of the exhibition, credited to Ai’s chief collaborator, a San Francisco art curator named Cheryl Haines. She’s the director and the primary voice, and she doesn’t hesitate to put herself centerstage and pat herself on the back. (The site was her idea.) Considering the magnitude of the project she pulled off — traveling between China and the U.S., supervising every little thing on Alcatraz itself — that’s mostly justified. Haines credits Gina Leibrecht as co-director and editor, so let’s pat Leibrecht on the back as well for a slick, dynamic film that utilizes all the techniques of the modern documentary (lots of animation, swelling music, and layered editing).
But the film’s role as a promotional piece gives it the feel of a DVD “behind the scenes” film — one of those bright mini-documentaries you watch after the movie feature, in which everyone congratulates everyone else and any messy production questions are simply ignored. Don’t expect to learn how Haines negotiated to get the rights to the prison, or who funded the project, or how much all those worker bees doing the grunt work were paid. Things happen because Ai Weiwei wills them to happen, and no thorny problems ever need to be confronted.
Of course, one-sided “behind the scenes” docs can be well-made, informative, and just as intriguing as the main feature, and Yours Truly qualifies on all counts. It’s a fine introduction to the attention-grabbing works of China’s most famous artist, and it may leave you wanting to learn more.
Grade: B. Not rated but PG equivalent. Available July 17 from Grail Moviehouse’s virtual cinema streaming program.
(Photo: Courtesy of FOR-SITE Foundation)
