BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.—Fresh off a plane from New York on July 20, Alison Klayman sat across from me in a stark ballroom of The Beverly Hills Hotel to discuss her new, highly acclaimed documentary, “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry.”
Ai Weiwei, a controversial, complex Chinese artist is probably China’s most famous artist at the moment and also its most outspoken critic. Ai uses any and every medium possible to express and communicate. His blogging and twittering has stirred the ire of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
At the same time, his posts have fostered a following of fans and peers willing to risk their own safety by associating with the controversial artist and activist.
Klayman’s “Never Sorry” invites us to peer into Ai’s world through intimate moments with his mother and son, at public art openings, when confronting the abuses of the Communist Party, and while he engages in making his own documentary projects.
First time director who trained as a journalist, young, down-to-earth Alison Klayman admits to being uncomfortable sitting on the other end of an interview.
Klayman met Ai Weiwei while she was living in Beijing. Her roommate was a curator of an exhibit of Ai’s photos, during the time that Ai lived in New York, and she wanted a video to be part of the exhibition. Thus, Klayman entered the scene with camera in tow.
A documentary on a documentary
Klayman explained that the short film she made for the exhibit covered many more topics than were needed for the New York exhibition’s video. “We were talking about blogging, censorship, what [Ai] faced, and what he thought about contemporary China—also his upcoming Earthquake project.”
