Bus 44

Bus 44 (simplified Chinese: 车四十四; traditional Chinese: 車四十四; pinyin: Chē Sì Shí Sì) is a Venice and Sundance Film Festival award-winning short film written and directed by Chinese-American filmmaker Dayyan Eng in 2001, starring Chinese actress Gong Beibi and Wu Chao. Bus 44 takes place on the outskirts of a small town and tells the story of a bus driver (Gong) and her passengers' encounter with highway robbers. The film was loosely based on an amalgamation of supposed true events, though there has never been any verified source.

Bus 44
Directed byDayyan Eng
Written byDayyan Eng
Produced byDayyan Eng
StarringGong Beibi
Wu Chao
Li Yixiang
CinematographySam Koa
Edited byDayyan Eng
Music byZhang Yang
Distributed byColordance Pictures
Release date
2001
Running time
Short: 11 min.
CountryHong Kong / U.S.
LanguageMandarin

Plot

The short film introduces a female driver driving a bus on a remote road. A young man came up on the way. The two people had a good impression during their conversation. Two gangsters stopped the bus and boarded it. They got on the bus and robbed all the passengers' belongings. However, the gangsters did not end their crime at robbery, but they also pulled the female driver out of the bus and raped her.

At the critical moment, all the passengers in the car thought "more is worse than less" and chose to remain indifferent. Only the guy went down to rescue the female driver, but he was also stabbed in the leg with a knife and beaten by the culprit. After that, the two gangsters left, and the traumatized female driver returned to the car, but removed the young man out of the bus and took the other passengers on the road. The young man had to get in another car to move on. Later, he found that there were many policemen in front of him. After asking, he learned that the female driver drove the bus down the cliff, and neither she nor the other passengers were spared.

Production

Bus 44 was director Dayyang Eng's first professional short film. It was shot on 35mm film stock with a small cast and crew on the outskirts of Beijing in 2001.

Commenting on the film, the director stated, "I have always been interested in social psychology and wanted to do a film about how people react under certain stressful circumstances. The story attracts me not only because it has an interesting plot with a twist, but mostly because the underlying theme is even more haunting than the events that take place. I intentionally made this film with a certain ambiguity of time and place -- this story could have taken place anywhere in the world. Making films about people and human nature attracts me because I feel that people around the world have much more in common than they do differences. "Bus 44" carries a universal theme that travels across all boundaries and societies, trespassing the dark side and bright side of human behavior."[1]

Reception and legacy

Bus 44 The film was covered extensively in the Chinese media and was critically acclaimed in Asia, United States and Europe gaining TV and theatrical distribution in territories worldwide. The film won awards at Venice Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and was invited to Cannes Film Festival the first time a Chinese-language short film won in all three festivals' history.[2]

Bus 44 has been viewed by millions of people around the world on TV, in theaters, and online.[3] In China and Korea, the film has been widely available online since its debut, and on YouTube alone, the film has garnered almost 5 millions views.

In 2013, American stand-up comedian, Reginald D. Hunter, related the entire plot of Bus 44 to audiences during one of his routines about "f*** you movies".[4]

Awards
  1. "Colordance Pictures". www.colordance.com. Retrieved 2022-07-09.
  2. "伍仕贤短片再创纪录 《车四十四》入选戛纳影展_影音娱乐_新浪网". ent.sina.com.cn. Retrieved 2022-09-27.
  3. Bus 44 - Award-Winning Short Film, retrieved 2022-07-09
  4. Fun, Bit of, Women Drivers and Men's Weakness, retrieved 2022-09-27
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