2nd Taxifilmfest 2025 – Review and Outlook

Interview and picture Dr Wolf Siegert, with Irene Jaxtheimer, Klaus Meier and Stephan Berndt on 22 February 2025 at 10:30 p.m.

WS: Today is 22 February 2025, and we are here in a small group of curators at the end of the youngest festival during this Berlinale. and there are people here in this curatorium that I already know from the time of the Berlinale when we started to defend ourselves against certain developments in the mid-eighties and to say that we now also want to raise the electronic media in this film world, but now something completely different is the case.

We have electronic media with which we can produce films, not just us but everyone in this big wide world, and for the second time, and for the first time in a really impressive process, we have managed to call on all these people and say ‘all these films that have anything to do with the topic of taxis, should they be submitted to this second Berlin Taxifilmfest.

And the curators of this Taxifilmfest are sitting across from me now, we have already spent a very long evening together here, to distribute the prizes, to show the films again. So we shouldn’t exaggerate with time, but we should at least give them a chance to introduce themselves briefly. Ladies first.

Who, what and why

IJ: My name is Irene Jaxtheimer. I have been in this cultural group since last year. Together we pulled the Taxifilmfest out of the ground last year to defend ourselves against Uber-Macht, which was sponsoring the Berlinale at the time. We succeeded. They are no longer a sponsor and we made the film festival with Klaus’ ideas. We didn’t go for well-known films like last year, but tried something completely new this year, and it worked well. We had fun and also attracted some people who showed interest. We work very well together and feel comfortable with each other, even if it’s ten long days. Now we’re glad to have a break for a while.

SB: I’m Stephan Berndt, I have a taxi company here in Berlin with 50 employees. A few years ago, 10 to 12 years ago, I founded a taxi association to represent the multi-car companies that work properly, because that didn’t exist before.

We got to know each other better back then, I brought Irene onto the board, and she is still on it today. I said goodbye to them and joined this, let me call it, ‘fun guerilla’. As part of our work, which we also plan to expand a bit beyond the Taxifilmfest with a Taxi Culture Festival, which we would like to organise. Klaus also has a few ideas, which he will talk about in a moment.

We are now pursuing the idea that taxis are part of the culture of this city, and that all the people who work in this industry are so much more than just drivers who drive a vehicle around the city. They are artists, they are people with many qualities and talents, and we would like to see this piece of culture preserved, not only for economic reasons, although that is of course the first thought, but also to make clear the difference to the platform capitalists who are moving in here, and who are simply only interested in money, who create bad working conditions, precarious employment, who plunder the welfare state, who work illegally.

We want to counter that with something that has existed for a long time, that has grown, that is part of this thing, and we are now also using these means, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s much more creative than just saying ‘I’m against it, and I think it’s shit’ and going out on the streets and protesting. That’s all part of it, but we’re just taking it on this cultural track.

KM: I’m Klaus Meier and I’m really happy to have you for this project and otherwise. We’ve known each other for over a year in this strange collaboration, and we can do more. To me that is actually the most important thing in the whole story. And as far as art and trade policy are concerned, we’ll see how far we get with that.

I can only say that the attempt, on the recommendation of Hiro [1], to make a worldwide call for submissions and to pay a hundred dollars for it, delivered a huge bundle of data junk that was completely unusable for us, from which, out of 1640 submissions, we were then able to select around 60 really good, usable films, about half of which we were able to show, and we have a half that is still waiting for us to provide them with a forum in which they will be noticed.

This has two consequences. On the one hand, we create a platform for the filmmakers who want to and should be seen because they have something relevant to say, and we have another opportunity to invite people to engage in self-reflection, to argue about what we see, and thus to make some progress.

Apart from that, this year we managed to hold a workshop on counter-cartography, in which we worked out, on a small scale, what taxi drivers can do, what taxi drivers are capable of, what you can’t do with the app and especially with the Uber system. I think this is an important contribution to seeing how taxis will fare in the future.

Some things will end, they have to. Uber, for example, is a transitional solution. All these unqualified drivers won’t survive for long. They’ll be replaced by robots at some point, but the taxi drivers who have what we’ve developed in this workshop are unbeatable, you can’t get rid of them with these automated methods. And that’s good, because these are the people who can do something for the city and its people.

That is the political aim of the Taxifilmfest, and the aesthetic aim is simply to watch and discover good films, and I think we’ve been lucky in that some really great stuff has come in.

discoveries

WS: After these introductory statements, you would actually need a whole hour of broadcasting time to unfold everything that has been said here. We don’t have that option, but today we can actually just build a small trigger, a small impetus, to spark curiosity. And that curiosity is the same whether you’re sitting in a car being driven from A to B and suddenly learn what’s actually happening out there on the road, and maybe even in the mind of the person driving the car, and maybe even fantasising about what’s happening in your own head while you’re driving through these streets.

This interaction between people, machines and landscapes is a truly magnificent event, which has become clear to me from my own experiences and from what I have seen, and from very, very, very different experiences and cultures. That is probably what is so impressive, because we have had images from all over the world, because everyone has gathered here. In the past, my experience was always that there were voluntary and involuntary taxi drivers. The involuntary ones are always the ones who somehow had to feed themselves during their studies, and the voluntary ones are the ones who actually made a career out of it.

Today, all these boundaries are disappearing, and completely new horizons are developing. I would like to use the second round for you to talk about the horizons that have opened up for you as a result of watching these films.

IJ: It’s like when you’re in a taxi and you drive people around, you start talking and hear some very exciting stories. There are life stories, people are liberated in a taxi, it’s sometimes like a confessional, the passengers tell their stories freely, because they know they will most likely never see each other again, but they unburden themselves. Sometimes you hear stories that really touch you, or you are impressed by celebrities you have sitting in the taxi. It’s always an encounter. Not everyone always wants to talk, you can tell that too, then you leave them alone. When you realise that someone wants to get something off their chest, I don’t do that so often anymore, but it’s still an exciting thing, and that’s life. Sometimes life takes place in the back seat of a taxi.

SB: What Irene just mentioned, first of all what happens in the taxi, in motion, rushing through a city like that, with how many people you come across in a big city, and that’s where the festival comes full circle again. There are people who have travelled the world a lot. I’ve also been on the road a lot, but I haven’t travelled to all the continents. There is still a lot for me to see, but what was always exciting in this city was that you met the world in this city. You have always experienced a piece of this world and these perspectives in your car. Not only in the car, but especially there, because it’s a very intimate space. ‘Confessional’ is a very good term. People open up because they know they’ll never see you again, maybe you just take a shine to each other, and then it all just flows out. That’s one thing.

But the second point that I see in the process, which has emerged in our work, is quite simply this concept of culture, which can and must be broadly defined, and there are so many areas in our lives, in this city in which we live, that are being attacked by the greed of capitalism. Whether it’s the real estate industry that drives out the clubs and drives people out of the city centre because they can no longer afford the apartments, so much is threatened, and our industry is also threatened by these illegal activities.

For me, the whole thing so far, our joint work has generated this kick, that’s why there’s this cultural festival, we have to create networks, all these threatened segments of this city, they actually have to join forces, and not take over from this austerity idea because one or two euros are cheaper, and bring this awareness through our actions into the minds of young people, who are now very screen-savvy, who sometimes don’t even go out into the real world, but only move in their digital world, to maybe open a few windows and find a few points of contact, so that they can practice solidarity with each other against what is destroying us all. That’s what motivates me in all of this.

KM: Yes, you’re right. Of course. What did I discover at this festival? That it’s a bit like this everywhere. There are differences, different business models for taxis and rental cars in the world. The basic mechanisms are the same everywhere, and it is the case everywhere that qualified drivers who also have at least a minimal knowledge of culture, or a little more, are able to give their work a completely different meaning, consciously or unconsciously.

Our Chinese taxi driver, who forms the link between all the stories in today’s film, is such an example. He is a man who has been brought low by personal tragedy, who in turn encounters the many effects of social developments on the people in his country in his taxi, and who then shows us what he sees. This film is constructed in such a way that it is this man who shows us his world or the world around him.

I think that’s what’s really interesting, that these encounters, these experiences, if they are properly processed, if they are cultivated with a little effort, can be very fruitful for many people.

The multitude of entries and perspectives that we have experienced this year can now be combined in such a way that something more than just a little fun is created. ‘A bunch of taxi drivers get together and watch films from their DVD collection’, but this time we have a treasure trove of perspectives, from different countries with different intentions, staged in a wide variety of dramatic ways, and all of this can lead us to a new image of ourselves. That’s actually the most interesting thing.

SB: One sentence about this: Because it is always uprooting and dehumanisation that we experience, regardless of the culture. The original, whether it was those old rickshaws or our old cabs, that was our world, and we are literally being torn out of this traditional world, uprooted by these new mechanisms that are so effective. I think it destroys so much of what we understand as our world. It’s actually the same worldwide.

The winners

WS: And with the presentation that we have just heard from the People’s Republic of China, we are at one of the three films that have received an award. This is the final round. Each of you should now pick a film and describe it again for our listeners, and of course for the listeners, and for all those who are in between, and of course for them. And, Klaus, since you started with one film, you can briefly outline it again, and the other two will speak again with the other two films, and then we’re almost done.

Thank you for your attention so far, and as you can see, it is and remains exciting. Klaus Meier:

China [2]

KM: This year, we organised a film evening called “In China it’s almost like here”. What “is almost like here” is the isolation of people, their exposure to technology and bureaucratic processes. In the film, which is also called “Lonely City” and is set in, around and above Chongqing, a taxi driver who has suffered a tragic fate himself discovers, in three episodes, the fates of other people who have to deal with these modern developments. They are all confronted with something so big, so oversized, that it almost becomes inhuman again.

The film shows a world in which the transformation of nature through massive construction projects is creating monstrous landscapes that are eating into the historical landscapes where, in the eighth century, Li Bai, Du Fu and other famous poets succumbed to their tragic fates at the time and made poems out of them. And today, I believe that we have the chance, unlike those poets who were only individuals, to set things in motion through networking, whether in China or here. That’s happening. This ‘setting in motion’ is, so to speak, subcutaneous. You can feel it all the time in the films, that people are acting. That’s what gives me hope, that things are possible regardless of political systems.

Germany [3]

SB: My hope is that by showing these films, we can make other people aware that we are all in this together. The films themselves are not necessarily hopeful in the end, some of them were very dark, frustrating, depressing. I think, when I now take ‘It’s about Luis’, of parents who have no time for their children because they have to work until they drop, who are stuck in jobs where they are more or less enslaved, have to work inhumanely. Many people suffer under these conditions, and by showing this from a variety of perspectives, whether it’s the parcel delivery driver in the UK or the taxi driver in China or in Berlin, it doesn’t really matter. We have these living conditions everywhere, and they are dehumanising us more and more.

I think that if we realise that this is the downfall of our culture, of whatever culture, whether here or elsewhere, then we should actually be fighting against it globally. It is encouraging to see a bit of awareness of this in other people who watch the films.

Berlin [4]

IJ: Then there was the film from the 80s, when I had just come to Berlin, about the bar Ruine. At the time, the Ruine was a bombed-out house, of which only one dining room, the first floor and the cellar remained. One of the taxi drivers, Knut Hoffmeister, who was also involved in the sponti-left scene at the time, provided Super 8 footage of it, which in turn was developed into a film by the two directors from Munich who are still studying at the film academy. They conducted interviews with people from that time who are now very old, and brought it closer to us. Knut Hoffmeister with his band “Die notorischen Reflexe”, which, as the name suggests, was a bit experimental in terms of music, which caused a bit of a stir, or the squatter scene, which was happening at the same time, things were being moved. It shouldn’t stay the same, but it should be shaken up, which is what happened.

The Ruine was then closed, which also led to protests, and that was the reason why we showed this film in the club Wilde Renate, because they will also have to close at the end of this year.

It’s a club that worked well for a long time, but then the money wasn’t enough to pay the high rents, and so culture and clubs are being closed down. That was the right place to show this film. We also got young people to deal with it, which is also interesting, who are actually far removed from the taxi, normally in this day and age. It touched me that they were then interested in such things, in an old story from the eighties, great! They brought it up again and we can discuss what it was like back then and what it is like now, and whether we still have hope that there could be a rescue again.

And now? What comes next.

WS: The final round has nothing to do with the topic of the end, because we are only at the beginning of a development of two years now, which will certainly continue, and which can certainly be studied over the next months and perhaps years at the website www.taxifilmfest.de, but rather, at the end, I will give you the microphone again for a question that I did not ask, but which might be important to you, and to which you might have an answer that I cannot possibly know, because I did not ask the question. So, it’s getting absurd, it’s getting philosophical, but maybe it also offers an opportunity to just say something, because you didn’t make a film, but what would still be important for you to share with our audience, and that’s why the microphone is going around again through this group that has found each other so wonderfully. Ladies first.

IJ: It would be interesting to ask whether we could make a film ourselves that would bring us a little closer to the facts, which we know, and could present something like that from our point of view. Of course, you would need a lot of time and leisure, ideas and protagonists for that. I would be interested to see if we could manage that.

SB: Without being asked, it’s always a bit difficult because we’ve already told so much, but I believe that precisely this connection between film as a medium and different cultures, but also with this journey through time that we’ve been doing again and again, we were in the seventies, we were also in the future, we saw robot films, all these topics can really lead us to address people who are much younger than us with our project, but to whom these worlds then open up. That would be wonderful if we could succeed to some extent. Young people are not as apolitical as many of us old people always think. I see it in my daughters and their circles, the way they are out and about. They are receptive, but something has to come from our generation, instead of just partying and seeing how the month goes by. I would be very happy if we could contribute to that next year.

KM: What’s new? Yes, what you say is coming, and we are also doing that with the film, with what we have made ourselves, of course, exactly, there are already some approaches. What would also be important to me is that what we did not do last year for many reasons this year, namely a proper evaluation of everything that has happened now, what we have seen, what we can discuss with each other, develop the contacts that have arisen into projects, that would interest me, and there are plenty of ideas now, be it a Taxi Film Festival extended, be it the Taxi Film Festival Orchestra for “Fête de la musique”, be it, you name it. Something is coming.

WS: And with that, this conversation is over, but the project is just beginning to unfold, I think that has become clear now. If I have managed to contribute my share to the further development of the evaluation with this little conversation, then everything has been done to ensure that in a few years we will have a ‘Taxinale’ at which everything appears in the same quality as we have seen on the red carpet next door today.

Thank you for the conversation, thank you for your commitment, and now have a wonderful evening.

This text was first published as a podcast at DaybyDay ISSN 1860-2967 under the title TaxifilmFestFinale.