Ojai Film Society

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News About Ai Weiwei

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Ai Wei Wei 3Named by ArtReview as the most powerful artist in the world, Ai Weiwei is China’s most celebrated contemporary artist, and its most outspoken domestic critic. In April 2011, when Ai disappeared into police custody for three months he quickly became China’s most famous missing person, having first risen to international prominence in 2008 after helping design Beijing’s iconic Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium-and then publicly denouncing the Games as party propaganda. Since then, Ai Weiwei’s critiques of China’s repressive regime have ranged from playful photographs of his raised middle finger in front of Tiananmen Square to searing memorials to the more than 5,000 schoolchildren who died in shoddy government construction in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Against a backdrop of strict censorship, Ai has become a kind of Internet champion, using his blog and his constant—and frequently witty—use of Twitter to organize, inform and inspire his followers, becoming an underground hero to millions of Chinese citizens.

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry director Alison Klayman gained unprecedented access to the charismatic artist, as well as his family and others close to him, while working as a journalist in Beijing. In the years she filmed, government authorities shut down Ai’s blog, beat him up, bulldozed his newly built studio, and held him in secret detention-while TIME magazine named him a runner-up for 2011’s Person of the Year. Her compelling documentary portrait is the inside story of a passionate dissident for the digital age who inspires global audiences and blurs the boundaries of art and politics.

There is currently an Ai Weiwei exhibit touring the U.S. The installation is currently at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. Click on the following link to read a National Public Radio story about the installation. Unfortunately, Ai has had his passport revoked and is unable to tour with his exhibit.

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/awwneversorry

Film Website:  http://www.aiweiweineversorry.com/

“Liberty is about our right to question everything.”   Ai Weiwei Quotes

Ai Weiwei

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Ai Wei Wei 4The renowned Chinese artist and activist, Ai Weiwei, subject of the documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry being screened Feb. 3, was named a runner-up for TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2011.

In the spring of 2011, Ai Weiwei went missing for 81 days. He was detained in Beijing while attempting to catch a flight to Hong Kong and was held almost entirely incommunicado and interrogated some 50 times, while friends and supporters around the world petitioned for his release. On Nov. 1, 2011, Ai, who says the case against him was politically motivated, was hit with a $2.4 million bill for back taxes and penalties. Two weeks later, he paid a $1.3 million bond with loans from Chinese supporters who contributed online and in person and even tossed cash over the walls of his studio in northeast Beijing.

The son of a revolutionary poet, Ai has grown more outspoken in recent years, expressing his anger at abuses of power and organizing online campaigns. His detention came amid a broad crackdown on activists by the Chinese government meant to stamp out a call for Arab Spring–inspired pro-democracy protests as well as continuing unrest in the Tibetan regions, where 12 people had set themselves on fire to protest Chinese policies.

Wei, who speaks excellent English, sat down on Dec. 12, 2011 with TIME’s Hannah Beech and Austin Ramzy—and a calico cat, one of nearly two dozen cats and dogs at his studio—to discuss his detention, the poetry of Twitter and whether China is immune to the global forces of protest and revolution.

Read the TIME Magazine interview with Ai Weiwei.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

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Perks of Being a Wallflower 1cThe PG-13 Rated film, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, showing Jan. 27, is a coming of age story that resonates with teens and adults. The film is based on a novel of the same title by Stephen Chbosky that has garnered a cult following. Remarkably, Chbosky is also the screenwriter and director of the film.

The story takes place in a suburb of Pittsburgh during the early 1990s where Charlie is a freshman in high school. Charlie is the eponymous wallflower of the story, an unconventional thinker, and in the beginning shy and unpopular. Struggling to fit in somewhere he makes friends with several other outsiders at the school and a teacher who help him discover that it’s OK to be yourself.

The star-studded film includes Logan Lerman as Charlie, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, Mae Whitman, Paul Rudd and Dylan McDermott.

The Sessions

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The Sessions movie posterJohn Hawkes and Helen Hunt, stars of the upcoming film, The Sessions, on Jan. 19 & 20, have been nominated for 2013 Golden Globe Awards for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress. They have also been nominated for 2013 Film Critics Association Awards for the same categories. Using only his tilted head, his eyes, nose, and mouth and that quizzical voice, Hawkes brings O’Brien to life. “Hawkes’ performance is the must-see hook of The Sessions, but Hunt gives this funny, touching movie its soul,” writes the Miami Herald’s Rene Rodriguez.

Based on the poignant autobiographical writings of California-based journalist and poet Mark O’Brien, The Sessions tells the story of a man confined to an iron lung who is determined at age 38 to lose his virginity. With the help of a sex therapist and the guidance of a priest, he sets out to make his dream a reality.

“The Sessions is a pleasant shock: a touching, profoundly sex-positive film that equates sex with intimacy, tenderness and emotional connection instead of performance, competition and conquest.”—Stephen Holden, New York Times

Arbitrage

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Richard Gere in Arbitrage.
Richard Gere in Arbitrage.

Richard Gere, star of Arbitrage (screening Jan. 12 & 13), has been nominated for a 2013 Golden Globe Best Actor Award. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times writes about Gere’s performance, “Mr. Gere is one of cinema’s great walkers, graced with a suggestively predatory physical suppleness, and he slips through the movie like a panther. He’s the film’s most deluxe item.”

The Golden Globes take place Jan. 13 and will be hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. http://www.goldenglobes.org/2012/12/nominations-2013/

Working in the world of finance, where the almighty dollar reigns, it’s easy to forget that not all things can be bought and sold. Part thriller and part character study, Arbitrage tells the story of a financial mogul at the top of his game and in the process of selling his empire when things start to unravel. Writer/director Nicholas Jarecki’s thoughtful indictment of the self-interested capitalist mentality owes a lot to Gere’s performance—as well as a supporting cast of Tim Roth, Brit Marling, and Susan Sarandon. But it’s also the level of restraint shown in its condemnation of Gere’s character that makes the film feel like a genuine story and not a sermon.