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Chinese Independent Documentary :
CIDFA013:
TAXI
Directors: Fan Jian
Length: 59min
Production Year: 2008
Synopsis:
Beijing, a city rushing toward modernization, is the coordinate of China. Covered in the mask of the night, desire grows.
Taxi, swarming in the city, never seems to pause.
A taxi driver, thirty years old, married for 7 years, lives in Beijing. His passion has gone, in a city on its peak time of passion.
Passengers are, teachers, doctors, students, merchants, pimps, prostitutes, believers……
In spring, the driver says to every passenger, “the sand storm is coming tomorrow.” Summer comes, the driver complains to the passengers that his wife doesn’t love him anymore. The passengers also have their own share of stories of happiness and sorrow. Someone is going through a break-up and it is heart-breaking; someone came all the way to meet his old lover in a night club of Beijing; someone told the driver, it’s normal to have a loveless life. Autumn time, the driver tells the passengers that, he wants to be a monk, but where is the place with the absolute peace? Different passengers have different responses and answers…
Seasons change, color of the night remains, in which resides the stories of the mix of dreams, desires, and human nature…
Director’s Statement：
What I always want to do is to change the angles of camera and the ways of shooting. Some unexpected things may happen when we choose a special way to shoot. I’ve already tried to place a camera on a taxi. It’s not about seeking novelty or infringing others’ privacies, but to find something interesting when no one is aware of a camera somewhere. Actually in this way we may easily get to the most genuine part of one’s heart.
Beijing is the reduction of China. More and more people are crowding into this city, comes with expanding desires, yet love is and the warmth of hearts are fading away that someone are getting desperate. They are trying to escape. In fact the driver’s “run away” is his genuine reflection on this, only it has not been fully released. I help releasing his thoughts to see the others’ responses. Those questions for passengers from the taxi driver are also the questions from the director. The more intense the questions are, the stronger the human nature would be exposed. The taxi is a symbol. It’s a life track of some sort. The taxi driver is also a symbol. But he is more of a human being.
One flows into another, in these four sections of story. It resembles a four-act play, but different from the drama of a theater, we don’t know how it ends, it might never do.