Institute Film Series: Taxi

FROM THE BANNED COUNTRIES: A FILM SERIES curated by the School of Social Science and the School of Historical Studies

The Institute Film Series will screen on November 8 the film by Jafar Panahi, Taxi (2015). Jafar Panahi is an influential Iranian film director and screenwriter who is often identified as a central figure in the Iranian New Wave film movement. He was arrested in 2010 and charged with propaganda against the Iranian government. During the time he was appealing the sentence of six years in prison and a twenty-year ban on making films, he made three films in defiance of the state repression. The most famous of them is Taxi (2015), which follows him in a single day as he drives a yellow cab picking up passengers in Tehran. Thus the film clandestinely captures a candid and diverse portrait of Tehran seen through the windshield of a car and via the encounters with strangers and acquaintances. Winner of numerous awards including the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and the FIPRESCI prize presented by the International Federation of Film Critics.

The screening will be followed by a discussion with Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, who is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania and a former Member of the School of Social Science. Admission is free and everyone is welcome. Wednesday, November 8, 4 PM. Wolfensohn Hall.
The film runs 1 hour, 22 minutes.
Reception to follow in Fuld Hall Common Room.