An Elephant Sitting Still

3 Hours 50 Minutes • NR

Showings

Lark Theater Sun, Sep 15, 2019 3:30 PM
Lark Theater Mon, Sep 16, 2019 6:30 PM
Film Info
Event Type:Movie
Release Year:2019
Rating:NR
Genre:Drama
Production Country:China
Original Langauge:Mandarin
Subtitles:English
Cast/Crew Info
Director:Hu Bo
Screenwriter:Hu Bo
Music By:Yu Zhang | Yuchang Peng | Uvin Wang | Congxi Li

Description

"Powerfully Absorbing... An act of solemn, disciplined and passionate protest!"
The New York Times

"One of the greatest recent films"
The New Yorker


AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL
A FILM BY HU BO

Under the gloomy sky of a small town in northern China, different protagonists’ lives are intertwined in this furious tale of nihilistic rage. While protecting his friend from a dangerous school bully, 16-year-old WEI Bu pushes the tormentor down a staircase. WEI escapes the scene and later learns that the bully is hospitalized and gravely injured. WEI’s neighbor, the 60-year-old WANG Jin, is estranged from his family and, with nothing to lose, decides to join him. Later the pair is joined by HUANG Ling, WEI’s classmate. She is bedeviled by a destructive affair with a married school official. Together, this unlikely and desperate trio, decide their only hope is to flee as the bully’s gangster brother, enraged parents, and vindictive school authorities all go on a cold-blooded hunt for WEI across town. As WEI threads his way through the urban wilderness, he begins to come to terms with his own lost life. In the end, he boards a long-distance bus with HUANG and WANG toward a city in Manchuria, where it is a rumored that a circus elephant is said to be sitting still, seeming oblivious to pain and tribulations of the world at large.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:
Born in 1988 in China, Hu Bo graduated from Beijing Film Academy in 2014 with a B.F.A. degree in directing. His short film Distant Father (2014) won Best Director at Golden Koala Chinese Film Festival, and Night Runner (2014) was selected by Taipei Golden Horse Film Academy. His debut feature An Elephant Sitting Still, which was then still in progress, was selected by the FIRST International Film Festival Financing Forum in 2016. In the following year, Hu Bo participated in FIRST Training Camp under the supervision of Béla Tarr, where he completed the short film Man in the Well. He has also written two novels Huge Crack and Bullfrog, both published in 2017.