ARTIST SCI-FI FILM

Preston is a hot spot for UFO sightings. It also has the UK’s fastest-growing Chinese population. 

Such local trivia was the starting point for artist Shezad Dawood when he was developing a project in the town. The end result is this gentle and witty science fiction movie.

A young Chinese-looking couple land in a spaceship outside Preston, their mission: to re-establish contact and bring home the ‘Glorious 100’, sent to Earth millennia ago, in human form, to study and observe the development of our race.

After making contact with one of the 100, who now appears as a Pakistani shopkeeper, they discover that many of the 100 have become too ‘influenced’ by their adopted home and the trio must help them get ready to leave.

Somewhere between Patrick Keeler’s ROBINSON IN SPACE and THE 4400, the film takes in the controversial Brutalist structure of Preston Bus Station, and Avenham Park (site of the first mass Mormon baptisms) where large crowds of local people are drawn towards the strange lights of the alien arrival. 

Nothing will ever be the same again.

REVIEWS

"Witty, beautiful, vibrant, surprising" - Mostly Film

"An extraordinary and subversive sci-fi" - The National

"PIERCING BRIGHTNESS is one of the oddest, most unexpectedly delightful films that the Quietus has seen in some time, playing for all the world like a cross between 1960s TV staple The Invaders, an episode of Coronation Street and what the Ghost Box label would create if given cameras and access to weapons-grade psychotropics. ... We can't recommend this charming, original and really quite bonkers film enough." - THE QUIETUS

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR: SHEZAD DAWOOD

This is the first feature film by artist Shezad Dawood (born London, 1974). His distinctive visual style and conceptual approach has developed in films and installations shown at major exhibitions in the UK and internationally, including the 53rd Venice Biennale and Altermodern, the Third Tate triennial, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, (both 2009), and the Busan biennale: Living in Evolution curated by Takashi Azumaya (2010).

His work is currently the subject of a major international touring exhibition, also entitled: Piercing Brightness.

FILM DISTRIBUTED BY SODA FILM + ART

TRailer: http://trailersfrom.me/soda/sodapiercingbrightness.html

Tickets: £5 / £3.50 (conc)