Following the screenings of Kong Dashan’s acclaimed feature debut Journey to the West in the UK as part of Chinese Cinema Project, Shorts Programme 2 will showcase Kong’s short form films. This is a co-presentation with Sine Screen, offering the audience an opportunity to explore Kong’s creative process and trajectory of his filmmaking journey. All films are subtitled in Mandarin & English
Director Kong Dashan will be in conversation with Chris Berry following this screening.
The Sorrows of Young Mario 少年马力傲的烦恼
Mandarin | 28 min | 2011
Mario is a patient with circadian rhythm disorder who plays a game day and night in his flat. He knows that there is a secret passage in the game and obtaining a mysterious item inside can rewind time. Therefore, he tries everything to go back to the past and change certain things...
Legal Future Time 法制未来时
Mandarin | 10 min | 2015
Accidents of people being suffocated while consuming art films are common, so shooting art films is considered an illegal activity. One day, the police received a report that an illegal art film crew was preparing for a new film in a certain residential area, and a thrilling arrest operation was about to begin...
Night Blossom 长夜将尽
Mandarin | 19 min | 2015
The story takes place in a dilapidated state-owned factory in the 1990s. Mario is a worker who works on night shift there every day, and the only difference between him and others is that he is mute. Every night, he sits alone at the desk in the duty room and writes a story that reflects his real world.
In the Room of Love 亲密爱人
Mandarin | 12 min | 2016
In a hotel room late at night, a man dials the phone number on a small card, and a woman comes as agreed. He intended for them to enter each other's bodies but instead accidentally intrude into each other's hearts...
Goodbye, Mr. Kong 春天了，老师们走了
Mandarin | 16 min | 2017
Mr. Kong is a teacher at Shifang Experimental Primary School in Qufu, Shandong Province. He has been teaching at this school for thirty years. Because his son got married and had a baby in Beijing, he had to retire early and go to the capital to take care of his grandson as a single parent. On his last day of teaching, he says goodbye to everything at the school. However, the ending was different from what he thought.
Director’s Bio:
Kong Dashan, writer, director and actor. In 2011, he completed his undergraduate work The Sorrows of Young Mario, a short film adapted from the animation Li Xianji's Adventure. In 2014, he directed the short film Night Blossom, which won six awards including Best Picture and Best Photography at the 5th Nine-Minute Film Festival and was shortlisted for the Narrative Short Film Unit of the 12th Beijing Independent Film Festival. During his graduate studies at the Beijing Film Academy, he also created works such as Legal Future Time, In the Room of Love, and Goodbye, Mr. Kong. Among them, Legal Future Time was filmed in the form of a mockumentary and became a phenomenal short film success that year.
'A director should be a mental patient, and the audience should be their psychologist.' — Kong Dashan