BEIJING TAXI DATE: SUNDAY, MAY 2 TIME: 6:30 PM VENUE: DGA 2 BUY TICKETS

BEIJING TAXI
(Peoples’ Republic of China/United States, 2010) Dir.: Miao Wang
Video, 75 min., color, documentary, in Mandarin w/ E.S.

Olympic fever preceding the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing rapidly transformed the city into a fast-paced, competitive metropolitan area, changing the dynamics of both Beijing’s city setting and the mindset of the common people. BEIJING TAXI captures these changing dynamics by following three Beijing taxi drivers, intimately documenting their lives as a small reflection of the large general public in Beijing and their shifting mentalities in the backdrop of a rapidly changing city surrounding them. Director Miao Wang takes footage of normal, everyday settings of Beijing construction, streets, workers, tourists in the Olympic hype and the like and strings it together to create a lyrical, story-telling kind of documentary. Some of the most raw and honest testimonies made by the three taxi drivers followed were captured on the job from the backseat of their taxi cab — sights changing in the rearview mirror and the drivers’ voices commenting on the tribulations of being a citizen without skill in a city so quick to change. Beijing in all its Olympic hype is not the same Beijing that these drivers grew up with. It is a Beijing that they are racing to keep up with, hastily, with a pseudo-nostalgic sense to what could have been done to keep them thriving in the Beijing they know and live in today.

Wang does an extraordinary job in piecing together a poetic piece by using imagery and testimonies that may otherwise seem too common or even mundane. The intimacy is instantly recognizable throughout BEIJING TAXI as Wang captures shots of the drivers’ homes, workplaces, leisurely activities and other everyday settings to portray the common Beijing person absent of high class, city metropolitan status. Her camera observes the drivers’ smiles throughout the tribulations to support families, the life lessons squeezed between hasty work hours, the hints of regret for growing old without a perceived sense of accomplishment, and the remaining hope that still burns through all of them to reflect the common, working class Beijing citizen. The candidness in BEIJING TAXI only further contributed to its genuine radiance, giving the viewer a better perception of Beijing’s common citizens’ hasty yet hopeful attempt to grasp their changing surroundings and put it in the control of their own hands. Raw, genuine, and perceptive, BEIJING TAXI is an extraordinary documentary that puts a much needed awareness and insight right in the backseat of a taxi cab.
— Dara Kim

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COMMUNITY CO-PRESENTER: IDA