Published Monday, April 26th, 2004: MX, Melbourne's free daily metropolitan newspaper.

ON THE BOX

Playing by the rules of film-making is not in documentary maker SAM VOUTAS's nature.

Q. Your documentary The Last Breadbox, which focuses on three Beijing taxi drivers
in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympic Games decision and the dilemmas they have to deal with,
is about to be screened at ACMI. Are you excited?

A. Very excited. ACMI is one of the best places to screen a film in Melbourne at the moment.
The technology there is just extraordinary for anywhere in the southern hemisphere,
so it's a real honour.

Q. When you made the documentary in 2001, you ran into a few problems.
Did you ever feel like giving up?

A. Yes, we did run into a few problems. I had to get drunk with the characters in order to
gain their trust. I had to take taxis for no reason, just in order to meet them.
I'd sit there and talk to them, then pay the cab fare and they wouldn't let me shoot them.
But even though the cab drivers were perhaps unwilling to spend time with us, it was still
worth holding on to. But if Beijing had lost, I'm not sure I would have had
much of a film in the end.

Q. What made you choose this topic?

A. I think people had an idea through the media that China is something different than it is.
Like how people overseas look at Australia and only think about koalas. In China there's
a whole different culture that isn't really recognised. The cabbies who are
the working class heroes in the film have a real urban drive to them that I think
has been ignored by Western society.

Q. You're Australian, but lived in Beijing on and off for 11 years. How did that influence you?

A. I think growing up in Beijing gave me a lot of freedom when I was young.
For example, I was a bartender by the time I was 15 and I was serving drinks to other people
that were 13: there was no 18 (age limit) rule. I think having had that freedom
from a very young age gave me more of a drive to do something as crazy as
living in Melbourne and say: "Hey, I'm going to Beijing with a camera and
no government funding, and really no hope, to shoot a film."

Q. Do you have any advice for aspiring film-makers?

A: Don't pay attention to the rules, because the rules are made to be broken.

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