Ai Xiaoming

Ai Xiaoming is a Chinese documentary filmmaker, and political activist. She is also a scholar of women's and public issues, and former professor at Sun Yat-sen University. Ai was born in Wuhan in 1953, and has spent most of her adult life in Beijing and Guangzhou.

Since 2004, she has made more than two dozen films, including documentaries about citizen activism, or aiming to uncover whitewashed historical events. Her films include “Our Children" (我们的娃娃), a documentary about the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

Her films include: Tiantang Huayuan (Garden of Paradise), a documentary about the changes taking place in China between 2003 and 2005 in terms of respect and protection of human rights. Taishi cun (The Village Taishi) recounts the struggle of the villagers of Taishi against local authorities in 2005. Zhongyuan Jishi (The Epic of the Great Plains) in 2006, is a documentary film about the fate of villagers infected with HIV who, because of their poverty, had sold their blood. The courage they have shown in this situation is contrasted with official corruption. Guan'ai Jia zhi (The House of care and love) is a documentary released in 2007 on people infected with HIV after receiving a blood transfusion. It focuses on the case of Liu Xiaohong, a village of Xingtai in Hebei, contaminated during childhood. Kaiwang Jiaxiang of Lieche ( Train that leads to my house ), 2008, is interested in the plight of migrants, following the disruption of rail traffic on the line Beijing-Guangzhou (in), after winter weather.

The 2008 earthquake in Sichuan and its impact on the population, especially in the scandal of corruption in school construction, were the subject of three documentaries: Women Wawa (our children) and Gongmin diaocha (A citizen survey) in 2009, and Hua hong weishenme zheme (Why are flowers so red )in 2010.

In 2000, she visited America as a researcher on Women and Gender studies. In 2009, she was prevented from attending a Chinese Documentary Film Festival in Hong Kong, due to concerns about her personal safety resulting from her political film-making activities.

Ai has criticised the Chinese government's national policy of compulsory IUDs for women who have already given birth to a child. She said said that many women, herself included, had never been advised of potential complications and the requirement for regular checkups.

Ai's films are banned in China.

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