Trailers samples Google street view panoramas, along with the title sequences, trailers, theme songs and publicity shots from some twenty adaptations of The Condor Trilogy by Jin Yong (a classic ‘new wuxia’ epic first published in the late 1950s), interweaving mundane and mythical landscapes inhabiting the everyday.
The film forms part of susan pui san lok’s ongoing project RoCH Fans & Legends, which draws on fan uploads of over forty different media adaptations of The Condor Trilogy. ‘RoCH’ refers to Return of the Condor Heroes, the second book in the trilogy; ‘wuxia’ is a martial arts swordplay genre of Chinese fiction, television and cinema, usually featuring the adventures of male and female ‘knight errants’. RoCH Fans & Legends explores some of wuxia’s fantasies, landscapes, and archetypes, the trilogy’s numerous translations across popular culture, and recurring images of weightlessness.
Commissioned by Derby QUAD and CFCCA (Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art) in partnership with Animate Projects and University of Salford. Supported using public funding from the National Lottery by Arts Council England.