Enjoy new films from the comfort of the best seat in YOUR house while supporting the theatre and film festival
Sedona AZ (July 2, 2020) – With the Mary D. Fisher Theatre temporarily closed, the Sedona International Film Festival is proud to continue “MDF@Home” with “Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly”.
MDF@Home features several new indie films still in their theatrical release window and now available for you to stream at home from the best seat in your house! Best of all … you can watch alone or with more family members for one low ticket price. For each title, a portion of all sales will benefit the Mary D. Fisher Theatre and Sedona International Film Festival.
AI WEIWEI: YOURS TRULY
Human rights become profoundly personal when dissident artist Ai Weiwei’s monumental exhibition on Alcatraz inspires thousands of visitors to connect with prisoners of conscience worldwide.
The revolutionary feature documentary “Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly” expands on the unprecedented exhibition “@Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz”, organized in 2014 by the film’s director Cheryl Haines.
Following Ai Weiwei’s detention by Chinese authorities and while still under house arrest in Beijing, the outspoken artist and activist remotely transformed Alcatraz, a former island penitentiary and current national park, into a remarkable expression of socially engaged art. The multipart work culminated in an expansive display of larger than life size Lego portraits of prisoners of conscience from around the world, seen by over 900,000 visitors.
Throughout the film, we discover how personal these issues are for Ai Weiwei and the extent to which he wove his family’s experiences into the exhibition. In the late 1950s, his father, a nationally revered poet, was imprisoned in a remote work camp. Ai, his mother and brother recall years of privation on the edge of the Gobi Desert – and the profoundly moving impact of an unexpected postcard expressing support.
The final artwork at Alcatraz, “Yours Truly”, consisted of postcards beautifully illustrated with the national birds and flowers of the prisoners’ countries. Visitors were invited to write messages of hope to the imprisoned activists featured in the Lego portraits. By the time the exhibition ended, over 90,000 postcards had been sent. Then something even more astonishing happened: prisoners and their families began writing back.
“Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly” follows these postcards around the globe — from Alcatraz Island to Beijing, Washington, D.C., and Cairo—as former prisoners of conscience and the families of those still detained describe their impossible choices and the comfort they found and still find in messages from people they would never meet. By the film’s end, Ai himself is finally free, seeing his own exhibit in public for the first time. He meets with former prisoner Chelsea Manning, while others who have been released, such as Egypt’s Arab Spring activist Ahmed Maher, express wonder at the connections Ai has initiated and the many strangers who sent encouraging messages.
Ultimately, “Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly” is a call to action, extending the incredible reach of Ai Weiwei’s art by asking viewers to take the issue of global human rights to heart and make a simple gesture that would profoundly touch those unjustly imprisoned worlds away.
“Powerful … a moving cinematic experience!” — ARTnews
To view this film and other titles:
Log on to www.SedonaFilmFestival.org and click on the MDF@Home link under the Events tab on the home page (or directly visit www./SedonaFilmFestival.com/mdfhome/) for links to order virtual screenings of any of the available films. For each title, a portion of all sales will benefit the Mary D. Fisher Theatre and Sedona International Film Festival.