Please join us for a documentary screening and panel discussion of "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry," as part of the UCLA International Human Rights Film Series.
ABOUT THE FILM
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is the inside story of a dissident for the digital age who inspires global audiences and blurs the boundaries of art and politics. First-time director Alison Klayman gained unprecedented access to Ai while working as a journalist in China. Her detailed portrait provides a nuanced exploration of contemporary China and one of its most compelling public figures.
Ai Weiwei is China's most famous international artist, and its most outspoken domestic critic. Against a backdrop of strict censorship and an unresponsive legal system, Ai expresses himself and organizes people through art and social media. In response, Chinese authorities have shut down his blog, beat him up, bulldozed his newly built studio, and held him in secret detention.
The film Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry takes an unprecedented look at Ai Weiwei and those close to him, capturing the controversial artist’s forthrightness and unequivocal stance against China’s various forms of oppression.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS
YUNXIANG YAN is a professor of Anthropology at UCLA and the Director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies. He holds a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Harvard University. His research includes economic anthropology, social change and development, family and kinship, exchange theory, peasant study, and cultural globalization. Some of his work includes The Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and Social Networks in a Chinese Village (Stanford UP, 1996) and Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-1999 (Stanford UP, 2003). Yunxiang Yan became a Guggenheim fellow in 2010 and received the Joseph Levenson Prize for the Best Book on Post-1900 China from the Association for Asian Studies in 2005.
ROBERT CHI is currently an Assistant Professor in the UCLA Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University and has previously taught at Stony Brook University as well as Tunghai University in Taiwan. Professor Chi’s research focuses on Chinese-language cinemas, including those of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. His recent and ongoing research covers topics such as cinema and public memory, globalization and locality, genres including Chinese opera films and martial arts films, and the cinema of Shaw Brothers. His publications include “Dalu dianying zhong de Taiwan” [Taiwan in mainland Chinese cinema], Zhongwai wenxue [Chung wai literary monthly] (April 2006); “Fotografia, Memoria e Giustizia: La Strage di Nanchino del 1937”, Dopo la Violenza: Costruzioni di Memoria nel Mondo Contemporaneo (Napoli: L’Ancora del Mediterraneo, 2005); and more.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
DAVID KAYE is a faculty member at the University of California Irvine’s School of Law. Prior to joining UCI, he was the founding executive director of UCLA’s International Human Rights Program and its International Justice Clinic, working on projects dealing with accountability for international crimes around the world. For more than a decade, David Kaye served as an international lawyer with the State Department, responsible for issues as varied as human rights, international humanitarian law, the use of force, international organizations, and U.S. foreign relations law. He was a legal adviser to the American Embassy in The Hague, where he worked with the international criminal tribunals and acted as counsel to the United States in several cases before the International Court of Justice and the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal. From 1999 to 2002 he was the principal staff attorney on humanitarian law, handling issues such as the application of the law to detainees in Guantanamo Bay and serving on several U.S. delegations to international negotiations and conferences.