In Kyrgyzstan of the former Soviet Union during the 1960s a taxi is parked in front of a public phone booth. It is late at night with only a few people seeking to use the phone booth. The taxi stubbornly waits to fill up with four passengers. A young woman who just left her cheating husband, and two elderly citizens who are returning home from a long awaited visit to the city board the taxi, but the cab driver continues to wait for one last passenger. The four including the cab driver take turns making a call on the public phone. The woman calls her husband, the elderly friends call their old hometown friend, and the cab driver calls his wife and infant child. While they wait for the last passenger to come, the calls they make bring unexpected results. By means of a taxi that suddenly comes and goes and a public phone, Ernest Abdyjaparov’s Taxi and Telephone presents an account in blackand-white through extremely controlled space of lives at risk that intertwine in various ways. (KIM Byeongcheol)