Cabspotting traces San Francisco's taxi cabs as they travel throughout the Bay Area. The patterns traced by each cab create a living and always-changing map of city life. This map hints at economic, social, and cultural trends that are otherwise invisible. The Exploratorium has invited artists and researchers to use this information to reveal these "Invisible Dynamics."
The core of this project is the Cab Tracker. The Tracker averages the last four hours of cab routes into a ghostly image, and then draws the routes of ten in-progress cab rides over it.
The Time Lapse area of the project reveals time-varying patterns such as rush hour, traffic jams, holidays and unusual events. New projects are produced by the Exploratorium's visiting artists and also created by the larger Cabspotting community.
A young mother Allah Rakhi is married to a much older man Daulat Khan, with whom she has an eight-year-old daughter, Zainab. Daulat Khan is summoned by a local warlord who forces him to agree to an alliance between them by taking Zainab as his bride. On the eve of Zainab’s wedding day, Allah Rakhi pulls off a daring escape with her daughter, and begins the journey to Lahore. Dodging the far-reaching influence of the warlord, and befriending an adventurous truck driver, Sohail, mother and daughter embark on an epic journey through the sweeping landscape of Pakistan, where the search for freedom comes at a price.
Open Letter from the Writer-Director
There are some stories that never leave you.
In 1999, I heard a first-hand account from a survivor of an honor killing. It was the story of young mother in Pakistan who kidnapped her daughters, ran away from her husband and was pursued relentlessly by her family. I began wondering what would make an illiterate woman from a remote village take her two young girls one day and embark on a treacherous road trip to a city where she would be a stranger. This story became the inspiration for the drama/thriller "Neither the Veil nor the Four Walls." I decided to name the young mother, Allah Rakhi, which in Urdu means, “One who is protected by God”.
I wrote the first draft of this screenplay while in film school at Columbia University. The film became the story of Allah Rakhi, who decides to make a run for the road when her eight year old daughter is promised in marriage to a local warlord. Mother and daughter journey into an unknown world where they have to rely on the kindness of strangers. The film is a unique cinematic journey into the heart of Pakistan. It is a kaleidoscope of rich imagery and emotions as it sweeps across the majestic mountains in the north, over gurgling streams, through salt plateaus, and down south to the villages and crowded streets of Lahore. As the story comes to an end, it raises important questions about the price we are willing to pay for freedom, dignity and love.
As filmmakers, we hope to tell stories which not only entertain but challenge the status quo in societies. In Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s words, "In a time of a great moral crisis, silence in the name of patriotism is betrayal." As the socio-political situation in Pakistan continues to spiral into more and more violence, my determination to break this silence increases.
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