Following the screening of Hu Bo’s final film, An Elephant Sitting Still, as part of Chinese Cinema Project, Shorts Programme 3 will showcase the oeuvre of Hu’s shorts. This is a co-presentation with Sine Screen, covering five shorts made by Hu through his student era until three months before his passing. The collection aims to offer audience an opportunity to explore Hu’s strong auteurship and trajectory of his filmmaking journey.
All films are subtitled in Mandarin and English and shown in the UK for the first time.
To Cordoba 到科尔多瓦
Mandarin and Spanish | 23 min | 2012
A sick, middle-aged man boards a train bound for Tianjin.
A young man tells him that the train can take him to Cordoba, or even anywhere...
The Person Who Steals Milk 偷喝⽜奶的⼈
Mandarin | 31 min | 2013
The milk ordered by a man's family is always being stolen. He doesn't know who to blame. Could it be the pregnant woman who is always smoking, the dirty homeless man, or the kid with the toddler tiger hat?
Night Runner 夜奔
Mandarin | 27 min | 2014
This early work of Hu Bo was his graduation work at Beijing Film Academy. It features the self-redemption of a lumbago sufferer, which is a metaphor.
Distant Father 远隔的⽗亲
Mandarin | 23 min | 2014
Two people who have been released from prison and marginalised want to use their talents to gain a glimmer of confidence and hope for themselves. Even though they go through a lot of trouble to get on a talent show stage, they still miss their chance. However, they still manage to stand on the empty stage and deliver the show.
Man in the Well 井⾥的⼈
Mandarin | 16 min | 2017
During the apocalypse two starving kids find a dead body in the ruins…
Director’s Bio:
Born in 1988 in Jinan, Shangdong, China, Hu Bo studied Film Directing at the Beijing Film Academy. An Elephant Sitting Still was his first and last feature-length film, based on a story with the same title from his 2017 novel Huge Crack. He died by suicide on 12 October 2017 at the age of 29.