Human flow

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Movie
Original title Human flow
Country of production Germany
original language English , Arabic , Persian , French , German , Greek , Hungarian , Kurdish , [[Rohingya # Culture , Language and Demography | Rohingya]], Spanish , Turkish
Publishing year 2017
length 140 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Ai Weiwei
production Ai Weiwei,
Chin-Chin Yap,
Heino Deckert
music Karsten Fundal
camera Ai Weiwei,
Murat Bay ,
Christopher Doyle ,
Huang Wenhai ,
Konstantinos Koukoulis ,
Renaat Lambeets ,
Li Dongxu ,
Lv Hengzhong ,
Ma Yan,
Johannes Waltermann ,
Xie Zhenwei ,
Zhang Zanbo
cut Niels Pagh Andersen

Human Flow is a documentary film by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei from 2017 . The German production looks at the global refugee crisis with the help of film recordings and interviews in 23 countries.

The film premiered on September 1, 2017 in competition at the 74th Venice International Film Festival . A limited theatrical release took place in the USA on October 13, 2017. In Germany, Human Flow was released on November 16, 2017.

action

Over the course of a year, the film explores the global refugee crisis by portraying the plight of the currently 65 million people who have been forced to leave their homes. The reasons given are war, hunger and climate change , which force people on the long and treacherous journey in search of a new life. They make their way through overcrowded refugee camps , dare the dangerous journey across the sea and encounter barbed wire borders. Individual fates and the like are portrayed. a. from Afghanistan , Bangladesh , France , Greece , Germany , Iraq , Israel , Italy , Kenya , Mexico and Turkey .

In addition, the question is examined whether global society can find a way out of fear, isolation and self-interest to more openness, freedom and respect for humanity.

History of origin

Human Flow developed over the course of a year. A total of 25 film teams were involved in the shooting, in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Germany, Hungary , Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan , Kenya, Lebanon , Macedonia , Malaysia , Mexico, Pakistan , the Palestinian territories and Serbia , Switzerland , Syria , Thailand and Turkey, including the award-winning cameraman Christopher Doyle .

Ai Weiwei (2017)

Director Ai Weiwei, who also worked on camera and production of the film, stated that Human Flow was "[...] a very personal journey [...]". “[...] it is an attempt to understand what it means to be human today. The film was made with the deep conviction that human rights count. In this time of uncertainty we need more tolerance, compassion and mutual trust because we are all one. If we don't realize this, humanity will face an even greater crisis, ”said Ai Weiwei. The Chinese artist also had personal experiences with loss of homeland and displacement - he was abducted and imprisoned in his Chinese homeland in 2011, and his passport was confiscated. He was only allowed to leave for Berlin in 2015 , where he has lived and worked ever since.

Ai Weiwei had already dealt with the refugee crisis in previous work. He was on vacation with his family on the Greek island of Lesbos in December 2015 when he witnessed a refugee landing on the beach there. "I didn't know that the visit would be my greatest human and artistic challenge," said Ai Weiwei, who decided to stay on the island for the New Year. He also visited a refugee camp there for the first time. His installation Laundromat (Eng .: “laundromat”) was exhibited in New York (2016) and Prague (from 2017) . It consisted of 2,046 items of clothing that refugees had left behind in the Idomeni camp in Greece . Ai Weiwei had the clothes washed, ironed and sorted. In 2016, he distributed 14,000 life jackets on the pillars of the Schauspielhaus Berlin as well as 1005 used life jackets in a pond at the Belvedere Palace in Vienna . Under the title Ai Weiwei. Libero (Eng: "free") took place from September 2016 in Florence for four months, the artist's largest solo exhibition to date, which also included installations on the subject of the refugee crisis. The Reframe installation , which consisted of 22 orange-colored rubber dinghies attached to the facade of Palazzo Strozzi , caused divided criticism . Ai Weiwei stated that he respects everyone who seeks their freedom and called the refugees "heroes of our time". Ai Weiwei. According to the organizers, Libero became the most popular exhibition by a contemporary artist, with 150,000 visitors. Ai Weiwei's further exhibitions on the subject took place in 2016 in Amsterdam ( #SafePassage , FOAM) and in Athens ( Ai Weiwei at Cycladic , Museum of Cycladic Art).

publication

A first film trailer was released the day before World Humanitarian Day , on August 18, 2017.

Amazon Studios secured the exploitation rights for the USA . The film was shown at the Telluride Film Festival on September 3, 2017 . A theatrical release in selected cinemas in the USA took place on October 13, 2017. On November 16, 2017 the film was released in German cinemas. Human Flow is slated to hit UK and Irish cinemas in spring 2018 .

reception

At the presentation of the contestants for the Venice Film Festival on July 27, 2017 in Rome, Festival Director Alberto Barbera described Human Flow as "quite extraordinary". With his documentation, Ai Weiwei is represented in the competition of an A festival for the first time . Before that, he had exhibited his work several times at the Venice Art Biennale .

Anglo-American area

After its premiere, the documentary received mostly positive reviews in the Anglo-American region. On the Rotten Tomatoes website , Human Flow has a rating of 86 percent, based on seven English-language reviews and an average rating of 8/10 points.

Lee Marshall (Screen Daily) rated the documentary as "a deeply human movie". Human Flow is "a heartfelt call to empathy", but it also has "something of a politicized nature documentation". Marshall was surprised that the otherwise “defiant” and “bold” human rights activist and artist Ai Weiwei presented an “orderly”, “more accessible” film that, due to its structure and discussion, was more like a “mosaic”. Ai Weiwei spent time with the refugees to understand their experiences. He would never appear in the style of a "fairground narrator" like Michael Moore . Individual aerial shots would be reminiscent of the documentary film series Planet Earth . Marshall added that, unlike Ai Weiwei's formal experiments , Human Flow was "also a little less rigorous in its thematic and political focus." The artist “probably drifted with the human flow” “instead of setting goals a priori,” which is not a bad approach. However, this fact requires "a little patience from the audience and an award for the film editor".

Robbie Collin ( The Daily Telegraph ) said something similar about the “ patchwork construction” of the film, who felt reminded of Alfred Hitchcock by the regular cameo appearances of Ai Weiwei in the background .

Jordan Hoffman ( The Guardian ) noted that “there is no shortage of documentaries on the subject”, but Human Flow comes “closest to understanding the whole of the subject”. The film is a direct plea to the European Union to remain true to its refugee charter.

Jay Weissberg ( Variety ) criticized the lack of depth of Human Flow and described the documentary as "refugees for dummies". Although there are cinematic "moments of true compositional beauty", due to the large number of cameramen there is nothing "particularly characteristic" about the "overall package".

German-speaking area

The reactions in the German-speaking countries were more mixed:

Susanne Ostwald ( Neue Zürcher Zeitung ) saw a “visually stunning documentary about the worldwide refugee movements”, which wrested the “misery [...] amazing beauty”. Ai Weiwei goes "much further" than Gianfranco Rosi did in his award-winning documentary Sea Fire . Ai Weiwei had "created an empathic, deeply moving work with the means of visual art that points far beyond itself." Ostwald speculated that the competition jury of the Venice Film Festival could not possibly ignore the film. Human Flow is “a compelling pamphlet for humanity that stirs up, but also encourages. The depressing, inhumane aspects of the refugee crisis should not overlay the beauty of existence itself. Because beauty is what is most important to Ai. For him it is not an inner contradiction to show appealing pictures of deterrent processes. Even in poetry, to which Ai has a great affinity [...], it is possible to describe the ugly sides of the world in beautiful words. And that's how he manages to turn a documentary into art, ”said Ostwald.

Christiane Peitz ( Die Zeit ) was unsettled by the film. She noted that Human Flow does not address the “ethical dilemma” of European viewers. The quick change of scene causes an "immunization" that Ai Weiwei actually wanted to undo. "Or do you just develop a protective mechanism against the moral appeal that is in every single one of your recordings with such concerns?" Peitz asked himself at the end of her review.

Dietmar Dath ( Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ) strongly criticized Ai Weiwei's participation in the film, which he perceived as the artist's explicit self-promotion. Dath described him as a "documentarist without any distance to himself".

Julya Rabinowich ( Der Standard ) reacted similarly, attesting the film's lack of “sensitivity”, which accompanies the global refugees as a “mass”, “not as individuals”. “The temporary immersion in the long march through Europe is nothing more than dipping your toe into the wildly moving water of the uprooted. Where sensitivity and responsibility for the fragile, vulnerable counterpart are required, there is emotional emptiness. The beautifully staged pictures do not hide them. ”, Says Rabinowich.

Awards

Human Flow competed for the Golden Lion , the main prize of the festival, at the Venice Film Festival, but remained unrewarded by the competition jury. The film won the Enrico Fulchignoni - CICT-UNESCO Award and the Cinema for UNICEF Award in Venice and received honorable mentions at the award of the Fair Play Cinema Award (winner: Ex Libris - The New York Public Library ) and the HRNs Award - Special Prize for Human Rights (Winner: The Rape of Racy Taylor by Nancy Buirski ). On December 7, 2017, it was announced that the film from which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will determine the nominations for the Academy Awards 2018 in the category Best Documentary was in the preselection .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d "Ai Weiwei - Human Flow | La Biennale di Venezia ”. Accessed August 16, 2017. http://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2017/program-cinema-2017/ai-weiwei-human-flow .
  2. ↑ Release certificate for Human Flow . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 172962 / K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  3. ^ Venice Film Festival - Refugee documentary by Ai Weiwei in competition . Der Tagesspiegel, August 28, 2017.
  4. ↑ Human Flow: About . humanflow.com, accessed on August 19, 2017.
  5. ↑ a b c World-famous artist and filmmaker Ai Weiwei works with Participant Media and AC Films for the film Human Flow . Participant Media press release, accessed on August 19, 2017.
  6. ↑ cf. "Human Flow: Videos | Magnolia Pictures ”. Accessed August 19, 2017. http://www.humanflow.com/videos/ .
  7. ↑ “Premiere: Ai Weiwei's ″ Human Flow ″ in Venice | Movies | DW | 09/01/2017 ". Accessed September 5, 2017. http://www.dw.com/de/premiere-ai-weiweis-human-flow-in-venedig/a-40327970 .
  8. ↑ "Ai Weiwei's 'Human Flow': Flow of images from a million-fold escape - Film - derStandard.at› Culture ". Accessed September 5, 2017. http://derstandard.at/2000063536455/Ai-Weiweis-Human-Flow-Im-Fluss-der-Bilder-einer-millionenfachen .
  9. ↑ a b "Ai Weiwei - #SafePassage | Past exhibition - Foam Photography Museum Amsterdam ”. Accessed August 19, 2017. https://www.foam.org/museum/programme/ai-weiwei .
  10. ↑ "How Should Artists Like Ai Weiwei Address Human Rights? - The Atlantic ". Accessed August 19, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/04/how-should-art-address-human-rights/521520/ .
  11. ↑ Demonstrative object . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , March 17, 2017, p. 36.
  12. ↑ “Ai Weiwei. Libero | Exhibition from 23 September 2016 to 22 January 2017 | Palazzo Strozzi ”. Accessed August 20, 2017. http://www.palazzostrozzi.org/mostre/aiweiwei/?lang=en .
  13. ↑ “Renaissance and Protest Art: Ai Weiwei exhibits in Florence | Südwest Presse Online ”. Accessed August 19, 2017. http://www.swp.de/ulm/nachrichten/kultur/renaissance-und-protestkunst_-ai-weiwei-steller-in-florenz-aus-13699507.html .
  14. ^ "Video art in the Renaissance palace: Bill Viola in Florence - WORLD". Accessed August 19, 2017. https://www.welt.de/newsticker/dpa_nt/infoline_nt/boulevard_nt/article162701920/Bill-Viola-in-Florenz.html .
  15. ↑ "Ai Weiwei at Cycladic | Museum of Cycladic Art ”. Accessed August 19, 2017. https://www.cycladic.gr/en/page/ai-weiwei-at-cycladic .
  16. ↑ a b "[Watch] 'Human Flow' Trailer: Ai Weiwei's Documentary About The Refugee Crisis | Deadline ". Accessed August 18, 2017. http://deadline.com/2017/08/human-flow-trailer-refugee-crisis-documentary-ai-weiwei-amazon-studios-1202151608/ .
  17. ↑ "Venice: Ai Weiwei with documentary in the race for the Golden Lion | Movies | DW | 07/27/2017 ". Accessed August 16, 2017. http://www.dw.com/de/venedig-ai-weiwei-mit-dokumentarfilm-im-rennen-um-goldenen-l%C3%B6wen/a-39863675 .
  18. ↑ Ai Weiwei . In: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 34/2015 from August 18, 2015, supplemented by news from MA-Journal up to week 47/2016 (accessed via Munzinger Online ).
  19. ^ "Human Flow (2017) - Rotten Tomatoes". Accessed September 5, 2017. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/human_flow/ .
  20. ↑ “'Human Flow': Venice Review | Reviews | Screen ". Accessed September 5, 2017. https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/human-flow-venice-review/5121720.article .
  21. ^ "Human Flow, Venice Film Festival, review: Ai Weiwei's refugee documentary weighs on your heart like a cannonball". Accessed September 5, 2017. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/human-flow-review-ai-weiweis-refugee-documentary-weighs-heart/ .
  22. ^ "Human Flow Review - Ai Weiwei's urgent look at the scale of the refugee crisis | Movie | The Guardian ". Accessed September 5, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/aug/31/human-flow-review-ai-weiwei-refugee-crisis .
  23. ↑ “'Human Flow' Review: Ai Weiwei Shepherds Refugee Stories | Variety ”. Accessed September 5, 2017. http://variety.com/2017/film/reviews/human-flow-review-ai-weiwei-1202543842/ .
  24. ↑ "74. Venice International Film Festival: People in the Stream | NZZ ". Accessed September 5, 2017. https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/74-internationales-filmfestival-venedig-menschen-im-strom-ld.1313726 .
  25. ↑ “'Human Flow': Are we dulling yet? | Time Online ". Accessed September 5, 2017. http://www.zeit.de/kultur/film/2017-09/ai-weiwei-human-flow-venedig-dokumentarfilm .
  26. ↑ "Self-Promotion, Pain and Disgust - Film Festival". Accessed September 5, 2017. http://blogs.faz.net/filmfestival/2017/09/03/eigenwerbung-schmerz-und- Abscheu-1074/ .
  27. ↑ "Human Flow - Julya Rabinowich - derStandard.at› Opinion ". Accessed September 5, 2017. http://derstandard.at/2000063540100/Human-Flow .
  28. ^ "Collateral Awards of the 74th Venice Film Festival". La Biennale di Venezia, September 9, 2017. http://www.labiennale.org/en/news/collateral-awards-74th-venice-film-festival .
  29. ↑ 15 Documentary Features Advance in Oscar Race In: oscars.org, December 7, 2017.