Toronto Outdoor Picture Show Presents: “On the Job” at Christie Pits

Jafar Panahi’s Taxi uses a clever conceit to offer a window not only into the day-to-day lives of taxi drivers and other workers in Tehran, but also into the materialities of being a working filmmaker in Iran. In 2010, director Jafar Panahi was banned from making films in Iran for 20 years, for allegedly producing propaganda against the Iranian government. Rejecting the terms of the ban as censorship, Panahi began making films covertly. To make Jafar Panahi’s Taxi, Panahi disguised himself as a taxi driver and roamed the streets of Tehran, movie camera mounted firmly in place on his dashboard. Though this gives the film a documentary-style realism, the film is entirely fictional, and its use of non-professional actors, cinema verité style, and focus on social inequalities make it evocative of Italian Neorealist classic The Bicycle Thieves by way of fellow Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s A Taste of Cherry. Satisfyingly self-aware and extremely charming, Jafar Panahi’s Taxi is an intimate portrait of working life in Tehran that foregrounds the humanity of those labouring in less than ideal circumstances.

The accompanying short films similarly take to the streets to explore the social inequities of work. Lisa Rideout’s One Leg In, One Leg Out follows Iman, who after a decade of working as a sex worker in Toronto makes the choice to become a social worker to help support her fellow trans community members who supported her for so long. Shot largely in Toronto’s Church-Wellesley neighbourhood, the film shows Iman as both a beloved regular at local bars and drag shows, and a tenacious self-starter eager to forge her path in a new profession. Similarly, Toronto filmmaker Mariam Zaidi’s short doc Over Time is a tender portrait of Regent Park resident Shafiq, a real-life taxi driver by night, shop clerk by day. An immigrant from Bangladesh in the ‘90s, he has seen Toronto change as Uber’s gig economy has taken over, his once stable job as a yellow-cab driver becoming increasingly precarious, and his local community squeezed by rapid gentrification. Like Jafar Panahi’s Taxi, these two documentary shorts contemplate how spaces around work are often where we form the communities necessary to survive and thrive

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