Film Screening: Beijing Taxi

Beijing Taxi, a critically-acclaimed feature length documentary by Miao Wang, will be screened May 11th as part of Scene: Brooklyn, an annual film festival presented by the Brooklyn Arts Council that showcases cutting-edge films by Brooklyn filmmakers. The film screening, which begins at 8 pm at indieScreen on Kent Avenue in Brooklyn, will be followed by a Q & A with the filmmaker.

Beijing Taxi, which premiered at the SXSW film festival, vividly portrays the ancient capital of China undergoing a profound transformation. The intimate lives of three taxi drivers are seen through a humanistic lens as they navigate a quickly morphing city, confronting modern issues and changing values.

The 2008 Summer Olympic Games serve as the backdrop for Beijing Taxi‘s story, a coming out party for a rising nation and a metaphor for Chinese society and its struggles to reconcile enormous contradictions while adjusting to a new capitalist system that can seem foreign to some in the Communist-ruled and educated society.

With stunning imagery of Beijing and a contemporary score rich in atmosphere, the documentary communicates a visceral sense of the common citizens’ persistent attempts to grasp the elusive. The film is in Mandarin with English subtitles.

About Miao Wang Born in Beijing, China, just after the Cultural Revolution, Miao Wang grew up with the last remnants of pre-modernized Communist China. She immigrated with her parents to the United States in 1990.