4-minute silent film synopsis- The Blind Mama Bear

The Blind Mama Bear

Winter, Northeastern China, a 12-year-old girl with short hair, dressed in all black, sadly looks out the car window from the rear seat of a limousine. The sun of high altitude rises low and gives the sky a pinky grey shade. There is a line of black cars ahead, following a hearse, driving along a dirty thin river in a light snow. Tall buildings and factories that line the road give away to nothing but white snow and black mountains.

A piece of snow falls onto the roof of the hearse and doesn’t melt. We see through the hearse’s roof: a glass coffin is inside. An old lady in red lies there.

In the front seat of the hearse, two middle-aged men are throwing bill-shaped red paper into the sky. Some red money fly into the girl’s car and fly out. Her gaze follows the red money and suddenly she sees a mama bear walks slowly in the snow followed by her baby bear. When she is about to enter the woods, she turns to face the girl. The bear is brown and blind. Her eyes are covered by blood and scars. She turns her head away and keeps walking towards the woods where the trees are so tall that they create a wall. The bear and her baby disappear into the wood but they leave no footprint. Oddly calm, the girl turns to her mother sitting next to her and holds her hand, interlocking her fingers with her mothers’.

At a small hill, surrounded by tall pine trees, overlooking the village, the girl stands far away from the all black funeral crowd with her mom, fingers still interlocked with hers’. The father, very tall and thin, holds a clay jar walking from the car to the tombstones, raises the jar overhead and smashes the jar to the ground. He looks up with no expression on his face. More red money is flying in the sky over some small tombs. He reaches the fresh dug grave. He looks through the funeral crowed and find the girl’s eyes. The girl looks at him. She whispers something and closed her eyes.

She sees the black. And suddenly dimly she sees her younger self appear from the darkness. She sits with her grandma under an old tree monster located near the grave. The tree monster is almost dead. There is no leave on its shoulder. It spreads its arms into the sky and waving to nothing. Her grandma forms a bear shape with her right hand and makes a human shape with her left hand. Her hands transform into a real bear and a woman.

The woman, a mother, left her two small children alone in the house. She walked into the woods to collet branches for a fire. A blind mama bear approached her from behind and eats her in a whole. The blind mama bear transforms into the mother and comes to the house at night. The children don’t suspect and hugged the mama bear. They go to bed together, mama bear in the middle surrounded by two children. Mama bear starts to eat the younger child’s finger. The older child is awaked by a wet crunching sound. Mama bear attempts to quiet the older child by giving her a finger to nibble on.

The girl opens her eyes trembling and steps forward to join her family around the grave. The glass coffin is almost completely covered by dirt. They are putting the last scoop of dirt on her face. The girl gets to look at her grandma’s face one more time.

Nightfall. In the yard of a house in the village, the girl stands. The snow hasn’t stopped. Snowflakes fall on to the girl but don’t melt. The girl sees two human shadows in the window lined by a warm yellow light. One is tall and thin, the other is curvy. The curvy shadow pushes the tall shadow away. The tall shadow reaches the curvy shadow’s hand and holds it. Suddenly there is one more shadow crawling in between them. It’s a bear shaped shadow and it bites their hands off, left them with bare arms bleeding.

The light gets stronger and stronger. It washes everything away to white and the pink morning sun is rising. Snow stops. The mother in black drags a suitcase in her left hand and the girl in black in her right hand. They leave the village, leaving two lines of footprints in the snow.