The initial idea for Night Fare was to interview a number taxi drivers about their experiences; What had brought them from India? What are the trials and tribulations of the job? What draws them to the Red Pepper? etc. However, after spending numerous nights at the restaurant meeting the drivers, I realised that their experiences were so varied and my questions so abundant, that it was all too much to fit into a short-form documentary. So I decided to change my approach by offering a filmic impression – an observational point of view – of this mini cultural awakening taking place in the early morning hours at the top end of Bourke Street.

I thought about how films such as Suite Habana (Fernando Pérez, 2003), Our Daily Bread (Nikolaus Geyrhalter, 2005) and A Day in Varanasi (Sven Dreesbach, 2009) manage to provide an insight into time, place and activity without the need for dialogue. Thus I decided to forego traditional interviews and concentrate solely on constructing a film that encapsulates the environment, the people and the activity through observational techniques.

However, far from taking a direct cinema approach, Night Fare is at least in part a highly choreographed film. Many of its camera angles, sounds and actions are thought out and designed in advance. This is particularly true of the opening and closing sequences in which the camera follows a lone driver in from the street and back out again. This style corresponds to an idea that the film is an approximation of a typical experience. The intention is to let the audience engage with the lively environment rather than provide a strict observational reality. In this way Night Fare partly reconstructs a world observed during many nights research. Ultimately the film simply offers a tantalising glimpse into a sub-culture that I hope others find as interesting as I do.
– William