Liam Dalzell

Punjabi Cab

Producer/Director:	Liam Dalzell
Country of production:	USA
Year of production:	2004
Duration:	20 min
Sound:	Sally Rubin
Camera:	Liam Dalzell
Editing:	Liam Dalzell
Music:	Matt Knoth
Distribution:	Center for Asian American Media

Film plot

The darker side of American liberal society reveals itself  through the eyes of San Francisco’s Sikh taxi drivers in  PUNJABI CAB. Since 9/11, turban-wearing Sikhs in America have endured harassment and violence because they are mistaken for the stereotypical Middle Eastern terrorist. In this film, isolation and fear are made visceral through juxtaposing scenes of the almost other-worldly cultural kaleidoscope of the turbaned and long-bearded Sikhs and the dark, mean streets of the surprisingly ignorant and oftentimes hateful people who climb into their cabs. Death is "100 percent immigration, no one gets refused from there," reflects one Sikh cabbie.

Awards

Enersen Foundation Grant; UFVA Carole Fielding Student Grant; NextFrame Finalist

Liam Dalzell was born in India, emigrated to Ireland as a teenager, and then to the United States in 1995. He studied philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin and at New York University. He worked in academic publishing for several years, editing books in philosophy. In 2004 he received an MA in Documentary Film from Stanford University and since then has been working as a freelance cinematographer. Liam believes that the best purpose of documentary film is a vivid and beautiful contact with direct experience. And so his films are concerned with means of overcoming cultural and moral isolation in a modern world.

Filmography

2002: Keeping a Silence (Producer, Director)
2003: Watershed (Co-Director)
           When You’re Dead (Producer/Director)
2004: Punjabi Cab (Producer/Director)
2005: B.A.T.A.M.  (Co-Director, Co-Editor)