Trailer

Trailer, 2011 presents an alternative reading of footage from the artist’s science-fiction
feature film Piercing Brightness, as a 15-minute, experimental “trailer.” It also predates a
final edit of Piercing Brightness, which is currently in post-production.

Designed specifically as one of three parallel films drawn from the same material, Trailer
was conceived for gallery installation and short film platforms, as an interrogation of
the syntax between gallery and cinema and equally between short and long duration.
Positioning itself at 15 minutes in length, it is neither a conventional trailer, nor a long-
form film, while playing to both and with an awareness of the codes and interrelation
between them.

As with Piercing Brightness, Trailer is set in Preston in the North of England and the
city forms a central character. The plot interweaves elements of documentary, within a
fictional narrative involving the different and changing communities in Preston and points
to Lancashire’s position as having the highest UFO sighting rate and the fastest growing
mainland Chinese population in the UK. As such, apart from certain fantastical elements,
it is very much a socially responsive piece of filmmaking, utilising science-fiction as a
backdrop from which to contest fixed notions of race, migration and identity. It implements
interstellar travel to question racial and class-based social hierarchies and complements
these collisions with a visual language, which makes clear the depth and influence of such
mythologies.

The story begins with Jiang and Shin, a young Chinese boy and girl, who land in a
spacecraft outside of Preston. They have been sent on a mission to retrieve the ‘Glorious
100’ who were sent to this planet millennia ago to study and observe. Living through
countless lives without any scope for return, many have become corrupted, forgetting their
original purpose and slowly becoming influenced by and in turn influencing their adopted
home.

This film is part of a historical context within which one might see a relation to Derek
Jarman’s use of feature film narrative to explore contemporary social issues pertaining to
race and gender. It could also be said to update films such as Brother from Another Planet
(dir . John Sayles , 1984), The Man Who Fell to Earth (dir . Nicolas Roeg , 1976) and Alien
Nation (dir . Graham Baker, 1988).