Taxi wala (fwd)

Altaf Bhimji altaf at wco.com
Fri May 22 22:09:27 PDT 1998


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Taxi-vala

South Asia Citizens Web

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Taxi-vala

Auto-biography

A documentary video by

Vivek Renjen Bald

1994: 48 minutes; USA

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Taxi-vala/Auto-biography is an experimental documentary which explores

a complex range of issues within New York's growing South Asian

communities. The work takes as its point of departure the intersection

between a second-generation bi-racial Indian-American (the

videomaker), and a group of recent immigrants from India, Pakistan,

and Bangladesh who drive taxicabs, twelve hours a day, on New York

City's streets. "Taxi-vala" shuttles between the stories of these

immigrant drivers and the self-critical reflections of the videomaker,

combining Hi-8 video with Super-8 film, color with black and white,

real time with slow motion, and straight talking-heads interviews with

abstracted images of the New York cityscape. While the drivers relate

experiences of migration and displacement, economic and political

struggle, and their quest for the elusive and illusory American Dream,

the videomaker charts his own personal quest for community with the

drivers through the making of the documentary itself. In so doing he

raises questions of cultural, generational, and class difference

within the South Asian American communities, and explores his own

silences with the drivers around issues of sexism, and inter-group

racism.

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Taxi-vala/ Auto-biography premiered at the Whitney Museum of American

Art's Fall 1994 exhibit, From India to America: New Directions in

Indian American Film and Video, which travelled to Delhi and Bombay in

December, 1994. It has since screened at:

Visualizing South Asian Diasporas (Rice University, Houston, TX,

March 1996)

South Asian Students Association Annual Conference (Brown

University, Providence, RI, March 1996)

24th Annual Conference on South Asia (Madison, Wisconsin, October

1995)

Queens Museum of Art (Queens, New York, August 1995)

The Chicago Asian American Film Festival (Honorable Mention, May

1995)

Asian Cinevision's Videoscapes Festival (New York, May 1995)

Desh Pardesh (Toronto, Canada, May 1995)

The Asian Pacific American Conference (APAC) (Albany, New York,

April 1995)

The Asian American International Film and Video Showcase (San

Francisco, March 1995)

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For screening information, please contact the filmmaker at:

vbald at interport.net

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Go back to the South Asia Citizens Web .

home page:http://www.wco.com/~altaf/altaf.html Islamic and social justice articles, poetry, stories, and links -----------------------------------------------------------------



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