This is one of the highlights of the latest documentary by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.
In an apartment in Hubei province, in full lockdown, an elderly mother shows her adult son the awards received from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for his good and loyal service as an "ordinary executive".
“Look, look!” She insists as her son, who is clearly not a big fan of the CCP, sneers.
"You kept them all," he wonders, reading the date on old certificates.
"This one is torn," he remarks, pointing to a document signed in 1970 by Lin Biao, a former senior Chinese regime official.
"Lin Biao! You amaze me that you tore it up!" He exclaims.
“It’s not me, it’s not me,” replied his mother very seriously, under the laughter of his artist son.
"So who was it?" Teases the latter.
"No idea," she says to close the case.
Artist Li Wen and her mother, during lockdown in Wuhan City, China.
© Ai Weiwei Films
When he signed the mother's certificate in 1970, Lin Biao was at the peak of his career and held the position of first vice president of the CCP.
In 1976, at the end of the Cultural Revolution which left the country bloodless, Mao Zedong's former right-hand man was considered a traitor.
And four decades later, the mention of his name continues to embarrass the old "ordinary executive."
Released on August 20 on video-on-demand platforms, the documentary by Chinese artist and opponent Ai Weiwei continues sequences shot between January 23 and April 6, 2020, from the beginning to the end of the confinement of Wuhan.
"Coronation" features five main characters grappling with the restrictions imposed by the authorities to deal with the spread of Covid-19.
At a time when Beijing is seeking by all means to impose its story of exemplary management of the pandemic which has already killed more than 850,000 people around the world, the film presents both scenes supporting the official version and annoying images for the regime.
No place for sorrow
"Coronation" opens with a couple driving home on the evening of January 23 after the Chinese New Year celebrations, through deserted, snow-capped streets.
The man and woman stop at a gas station where a cold-shaking employee tries unsuccessfully to take their temperature.
The next moment, the police show up, check the couple's papers and ask them a few questions before letting them go.
The images show an operation carried out calmly and competently.
While the Beijing regime has endeavored to stage an effective management of the crisis of the new coronavirus, "Coronation" effectively shows that the authorities have already succeeded, at the end of January 2020, in small exploits in their health organization.
We thus see medical personnel arriving from all over China under the encouragement of reception teams at the airport, robots disinfecting public spaces, fully protected nurses working in hospitals with patients to the rhythm of beeps. 'medical equipment.
The documentary also presents the field hospitals built in two weeks to deal with the epidemic.
In a typical Ai Weiwei sequence shot, a doctor walks into a newly finished hospital, then walks for nearly four minutes through a maze of hallways before reaching his consultation room.
The picture darkens in the second part of the film, when a son tries to recover, alone, the ashes of his father who died of Covid-19, without the slightest support from the deceased's former colleagues.
In the People's Republic of China, there is no room for mourning or grief: nothing should hinder the official message celebrating the effectiveness of the regime.
A medical team in Wuhan disinfects, on Ai Weiwei's documentary, "Coronation".
© Ai Weiwei Films
"It all started 17
years ago"
The nearly two-hour documentary was made in complete secrecy and from a distance.
Exiled in Europe since 2015, Ai Weiwei provided instructions to amateur videographers in the Wuhan region and was able to recover images already shot.
Impossible to know more: to protect his collaborators in China, the 63-year-old opponent refuses to specify how the shooting took place or how he was able to access certain sequences.
View this post on Instagram
It is now 6:30 am in Beijing.
We are releasing Coronation, our film about Wuhan, China, in tribute to all the doctors and nurses fighting against Covid-19.
We share our condolences for the people who have lost their lives in this pandemic.
Coronation is available to US viewers via Alamo @drafthouse On Demand Virtual Cinema at ondemand.drafthouse.com Coronation is available worldwide on Vimeo On Demand via aiweiwei.com/coronation #aiweiwei #coronation #china #wuhan # covid19 #coronavirus #documentary #art #film #pandemic
A post shared by Ai Weiwei (@aiww) on Aug 20, 2020 at 3:38 pm PDT
This is not the first time that Ai Weiwei has used video as a form of expression.
His multimedia work includes clips and documentaries that take a raw look at social issues.
The theme is also familiar to him.
In 2003, while still living in China, Ai Weiwei produced the short film "Eat, Drink and Be Merry" ("Eat, drink and be happy" in English) in the midst of the SARS epidemic, a coronavirus which had also emerged in China.
"This is probably the only independent documentary on SARS, on how the government withheld information which had caused panic among the population. So it all started 17 years ago!" Ai Weiwei told France. 24.
The international community then pinned China for its management of the epidemic, accusing it in particular of having alerted the World Health Organization (WHO) belatedly and of having done everything to prevent the flow of information.
From the first news concerning the Covid-19 epidemic, Ai Weiwei kept abreast of the situation and had an idea in mind: "From the start, I wondered how to make a film without being in Wuhan", specifies- he told France 24. "Two reasons prevented me from going there. First, I had to leave China in 2015, and I live practically like a political refugee. Then, Wuhan was cut off from the world. from January 23: nobody could get in or out of it. Before that, we had already started to think about how to make a documentary. "
Despite a similar theme, "Coronation" is very different from "Eat, Drink and Be Merry".
After all, the China of 2020 is not that of 2003. Beijing's global ambitions, regional expansionism, repression of minorities and autonomous regions have grown stronger under Xi Jinping's presidency.
Technology has also enabled Beijing to increase surveillance of its citizens, and the pandemic has provided perfect justification for controlling their actions.
Since the filming of "Coronation", one of the five main characters lives besides "under high surveillance of the security forces", deplores Ai Weiwei.
Another - a construction worker who came to Wuhan to build hospitals, but was subsequently prevented from returning to his home province - took his own life.
Meng Liang, a construction worker, checks his phone while trying to get home from Wuhan, on one of the scenes in "Coronation".
© Ai Weiwei Films
No screening at international festivals
Since the end of the 1990s and his growing notoriety on the national and international scenes, Ai Weiwei has not hesitated to criticize and provoke Beijing with his multimedia works, denouncing in particular corruption and attacks on individual freedoms.
Drifts that still do not arouse great resistance in China.
Even if a generational divide is perceptible in "Coronation", Ai Weiwei puts it into perspective.
“It is clear that the elderly are more supportive of the system, notes the artist. But the young are not very different from the previous generation. You can see how the authoritarian regime has succeeded in controlling information and crank over the last 70 years. There is no basis for questioning or any form of criticism. "
For Ai Weiwei, while censorship is strong in China, there is also a form of market-driven self-censorship outside the country's borders.
The artist thus assures that he has failed to present his documentary at festivals.
“They are very dependent on sales and China provides the biggest market,” he notes.
“None of them can deprive themselves of this enticing market. The filmmakers, like the festivals that host their creations, want their films to be released in China. That is why all these festivals and all these production companies censor themselves. "
"Coronation" is available on the Vimeo platform (for all countries except the United States) and on Alamo on Demand (for the United States).
This article was adapted from the original in English by Henrique Valadares.
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