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Ai Weiwei to release book of first-hand stories from refugees
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Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei is pictured during an interview at the launch of his 'do-it-yourself' (DIY) art work 'Safety Jackets Zipped The Other Way', at his studio in Berlin on February 11, 2020. (AFP/John MacDougall)
T
he Chinese dissident artist has announced a forthcoming new book, "Human Flow: Stories from the Global Refugee Crisis," which will be published on Oct. 13.
"Human Flow: Stories from the Global Refugee Crisis" is inspired by the interviews with refugees, aid workers, politicians, activists, doctors and local authorities that Weiwei and his collaborators conducted for his 2017 documentary, "Human Flow."
While only a handful of the conversations were included in the film, the anthology presents a hundred of these interviews in their entirety to provide "compelling first-person stories of the lives of those affected by the crisis and those on the front lines of working to address its immense challenges."
The 400-page book also features black-and-white photographs taken by Weiwei while filming "Human Flow."
"Speaking in their own words, refugees give voice to their experiences of migrating across borders, living in refugee camps, and struggling to rebuild their lives in unfamiliar and uncertain surroundings. They talk about the dire circumstances that drove them to migrate, whether war, famine, or persecution; and their hopes and fears for the future," publisher Princeton University Press said of the book in a statement.
While "Human Flow: Stories from the Global Refugee Crisis" will arrive this fall, Weiwei is currently working on three full-length documentaries.
One of them will focus on the Rohingya refugee crisis, during which over 900,000 Burmese Rohingya were forcibly displaced or fled from the Rakhine state of Myanmar to Bangladesh in 2015.
The documentary is described by Weiwei as chronicling "a crisis that has almost been forgotten," with the Chinese artist announcing that the film is in the post-production stage and is due to premiere by the end of the year.
