A film by Miao Wang
Cinematography by Ian Vollmer and Sean Williams

Miao Wang

Born in Beijing, China just after the Cultural Revolution, Miao Wang grew up with the last remnants of a pre-modernized Communist China. She immigrated to the US in 1990.

After earning a B.A. in economics from the University of Chicago, Miao moved to New York City, where she began to explore her passions in photography, design, and film. Her multidisciplinary pursuits have led her to organize large-scale art happenings; publish an art book, “Overkill,” with Booth-Clibborn Editions (London), and work on award- winning designs with acclaimed graphic designer and art director Stefan Sagmeister. She earned a M.F.A. in design and film from the Parsons School of Design in 2005, where she began working on her first documentary film, Yellow Ox Mountain. This half-hour documentary, which she directed, produced, and edited, has screened at over 20 film festivals and venues worldwide, received a Best Short Film Award, was broadcast on Thirteen New York/WNET, and is distributed by Filmaker’s Library.

She has worked as an assistant at Maysles Films, the studio of the legendary direct-cinema documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles. As an editor, Miao has edited for programs for National Geographic TV, video projects for architect Steven Holl, a feature-length documentary shot by Albert Maysles, and a video art piece for artist and musician Malcolm McLaren.

In documentary filmmaking Miao has found the outlet to not only fully engage every aspect of her multifaceted interests and talents, but also a platform for her to observe and explore what truly touches her heart—the human condition.

Beijing Taxi is Miao’s first feature length documentary. She returns to Beijing for the first time as an adult for extended periods of time. The project is on a personal level a quest to revisit the mostly vanished city of her childhood memories, and to explore the new Beijing racing towards modernization. She captures Beijing with the unique point of view of an emigrant Beijinger carrying the perspectives of both a native and an outsider.

Ian Vollmer

Cinematographer Ian Vollmer was born in Alexandria, Virginia, attended public school in London, and spent an idyllic youth building tree houses and shooting BB guns in the woods behind his house in a suburb of Seattle.

Drawn to the cinema by the works of Raymond Chandler and Film Noir he studied under filmmaker Bruce Baillie and apprenticed with Yamashita Nobuko in Osaka, Japan. He got his start in the film industry in New York City as a grip on Amos Kollek’s Whore 2 and has worked as a lighting technician for film and photography, an adman in Saigon, Vietnam, and as a sound mixer for television programs like “60 Minutes” and Mark Burnett’s “Eco Challenge.”

His first feature length film as cinematographer, Alan Berliner’s Wide Awake, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006 where it was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize, screened at festivals worldwide, and premiered on HBO in May 2007. He collaborated with Miao Wang as cinematographer on her first film Yellow Ox Mountain.

Ian holds a BA from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and lives in southern Manhattan, where Chinatown meets the Lower East Side.

Sean Williams

Born in Wilmington, Delaware, Sean Williams dropped out of film studies at UMBC in Baltimore and moved to New York. Since age 17, he has worked at great video stores including Kim’s Video in New York, and breathed cinema and music every day of his life. Films make him remember life. Listening to music makes him feel like he’s busy doing something. His most recent feature length film as cinematographer, Ronald Bronstein’s Frownland, received a Special Jury Award at SXSW 2007, and was named 2007 Gotham Awards’ “Best Film Not Playing at a Theatre Near You.” Sean currently works as an archivist at Maysles Films, and often goes on shoots alongside Albert Maysles as additional camera operator.