Chinese artist Ai Weiwei lead ArtReview magazine's list of the 100 most powerful artists in the world last October. The Beijing-based artist, photographer, documentarian, architect, activist, dissident, avid-Tweeter and charismatic father made a splash on the international scene when he helped Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron create Beijing's National Stadium - more commonly known as the Bird's Nest due to its design - which gave a jubilant government both a cornerstone and bragging material for the Beijing Olympics. While immensely proud of the project, Mr. Ai denounced the regime and famously criticized officials for its treatment of dissidents and its human rights record in the lead-up to the event. Freelance journalist Alison Klayman met the artist through her roommate in 2008 by chance as he prepped an exhibition of photos he took while living in New York in the '80s and early '90s. Initially commissioned to do a short video on the fly, Klayman, who lived in China from 2006 - 2010 producing shows for PBS Frontline, National Public Radio and A.P. took on a larger doc about Ai Weiwei. In the film, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry which will be released this weekend via Sundance Selects, she captured him being assaulted by police, confronting police, promoting his view of human rights and traveling to acclaim overseas.
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The 2012 Cannes Film Festival remains a week away, but the wheeling and dealing is already underway — and probably not coincidentally, for competition films starring Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. Last week it was Pattinson's edgy David Cronenberg collaboration Cosmopolis going to E One, and tonight it's Stewart's long-awaited Jack Kerouac adaptation On the Road — just announced as the proud acquisition of IFC Films and Sundance Selects. Read on for the full details, and stay tuned to Movieline for more fest news as Cannes 2012 approaches.
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![First Position Clip: What's it Take to Be a Boy in Ballet? [Exclusive]](http://movieline.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/first_position_grab645-120x67.jpg?w=120&h=120&crop=1)
After an award-winning festival run, the ballet-competition documentary First Position opens today in limited release via IFC Films and Sundance Selects. (It debuts May 15 on VOD.) Director Bess Kargman's film chronicles six young dancers' passionate pursuit of glory at the Youth America Grand Prix, trailing along as they (per the film's synopsis) "prepare for a chance to enter the world of professional ballet, struggling through bloodied feet, near exhaustion and debilitating injuries, all while navigating the drama of adolescence." Think Racing Dreams in pointe shoes, and you're on your way. Meanwhile, click through for an exclusive clip spotlighting another kind of dance-world complication: Being a boy in ballet.
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Last anyone heard from team Human Centipede, led by the redoubtable, utterly demented filmmaker Tom Six, the third film in the series was eyeing a U.S. setting. Those plans might go south depending on whether or not Six and Co. can even get the controversial Human Centipede Part 2: Full Sequence screened uncut and uncensored when it opens Stateside next month -- an inevitability that a new, NSFW Australian teaser wouldn't have you count on.
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In Matthew Chapman's The Ledge, a battle of wills and of faith erupts between atheist Gavin (Charlie Hunnam) and uber-religious Joe (Patrick Wilson) after Joe discovers Gavin's been sleeping with his wife (Liv Tyler). The predicament lands Gavin on the titular ledge, forced to jump at the stroke of noon or else something terrible will happen to his lover... who's dealing with some intimidating marital overtures at home herself. Watch the Movieline exclusive (and NSFW) clip after the jump.
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First time director Cindy Meehl brought the capacity audience at Austin's Paramount Theater to its feet with her crowd-pleasing documentary Buck, about Buck Brannaman, the gentleman cowboy-horse whose life and work partially inspired Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer. After the film, Brannaman and the filmmakers walked onstage to a rousing standing ovation for a Q&A filled with horsemanship advice, behind-the-scenes details, and a shout out to the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan.
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