Documenting China’s Fake Case Against Ai Weiwei

“You criticize them too much. If this was 1957 they would have killed you already,” Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s worried mother tells him in a new documentary titled Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case, which documents the Chinese government’s fabricated charges of tax evasion against the Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd, a business registered not in his but in his wife’s name, although the charges are leveled against Ai. “It’s a fake case,” Ai explains.  “It’s a fake case about a Fake Company.  But the Fake Company is a real company and the fake case is a real case, but it’s fake, it’s fabricated.” In this up-is-down world, Danish filmmaker Andreas Johnsen captures the very real day-to-day dangers the artist and those close to him face from a Chinese government that fears Ai’s online influence with a young generation of plugged-in Chinese capable of considering widespread cultural change. More than any documentary on Ai Weiwei so far, Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case depicts accurately what it is to be an artist struggling bravely against political oppression and the personal cost of that fight. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Documenting China’s Fake Case Against Ai Weiwei."