TAXI - A ride-thru Freetown

Take a taxi ride through the streets of Freetown, Sierra Leone – from Queen Victoria Square in Hull.

An exciting new film by two local film-makers will bring the sights and sounds of life in Hull’s west African twin city to a cargo container in Hull city centre this week.

‘Taxi’, by Jon Robson and Murray Clark, has been commissioned by Hull Short Film Festival. The 20 minute film – presented in a split-screen format - has been produced from hours of footage shot through the windows of slow moving taxis.

Jon and Murray’s aim was to capture the vibrancy and life of the streets of Freetown, whilst at the same time showing the poverty and hardship of life in a city which is still recovering from the recent decade-long civil war.

Jon Robson explained how the film has developed: “A team of us visited Sierra Leone last May to develop a media-in-education project involving young people in Freetown and Hull – this film has grown out of that project. The two cities have been twinned for 25 years but we felt that few people in Hull had any real idea of what life is like in Freetown.

“People who visit the container in Victoria Square will experience Freetown almost exactly as we experienced it. It really is an amazing place, full of colour, action and incredible sights, as well as the sounds of people trading, hawking goods through the taxi window, shouting and chatting in the street – and all the time in the background the bouncing sounds of Sierra Leonean radio stations.”

Taxi is just one strand of the work that Jon’s organisation Cafesociety.org is developing in Freetown.

A year-long programme of work in Hull schools, supported by Creative Partnerships Hull, will develop young people’s media skills and strengthen relationships between the two cities.

A further documentary project is in development for broadcast on national TV and Cafesociety.org is also working with the British Council, the British Library and Hull Museums on projects relating to Freetown and the abolition of the slave trade.

See what the Yorkshire Post had to say about Taxi :-