Welcome to Babel

Welcome to Babel, winner of the Documentary Australia Award prize at the 2024 Sydney Film Festival, will be in cinemas from November 14.  

The film is about renowned Chinese-Australian artist Jiawei Shen as he is completing an extraordinary and monumental artwork that he says gives meaning to his whole life. This former Red Guard, still famous in China for painting one of the most famous images of the Cultural Revolution, 'Standing Guard for the Great Motherland', follows Jiawei as he is creating a fantastic parable of the history of Communism in the style that has established him as one of the world's great history painters.

Epic in concept and scale and painted over 7 years, his 'Tower of Babel' masterpiece is an enormous 4 panel work of 130 square meters and 7.5 meters in height. It depicts over 400 famous and infamous characters including politicians, soldiers, scientists, artists, writers and filmmakers who were won over by the utopian vision of the Communist movement, as well as many forgotten people who tragically lost their lives to Revolution. It also includes remixes of over 100 iconic artworks by left wing artists including Picasso, Matisse, Léger, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in an immersive artwork that totally surrounds the viewer in his vast 3-story studio in Bundeena, just outside of Sydney.

As Jiawei's masterpiece progresses, he and his artist wife Lan Wang tell their own stories of lives shared with millions of others in Mao's China through the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution, before the traumatic events of June 1989 in Tiananmen Square saw them settle in Australia. 

Welcome To Babel puts an intimate and human face to an extraordinary couple and the story of their generation in China and Australia. And asks whether the present can learn from the past.

The film is directed by James Bradley and produced by Graeme Isaac.

Jiawei immigrated to Australia in 1989, resigning as a member of the Chinese Communist Party at the time of Tiananmen but remaining a highly respected figure in the Chinese art world. He is now also one of Australia's leading portrait artists, known for the academic and literary qualities of his works. He has won numerous major art awards in Australia including the Mary MacKillop Art Award, the Doug Moran Portrait Prize and the Sir John Suliman Prize, and has been a finalist in Australia's premiere portrait award the Archibald a record 14 times. He has been commissioned by the Australian National Portrait Gallery and Australian Federal Parliament House to paint portraits of celebrities, including the Danish Crown Princess Mary (2005), the Australian Prime Minister John Howard (2009) and Governor General Sir Peter Cosgrove (2018). His portrait of Pope Francis (2013) is in the Vatican collection.