A Tourist Story

I'm a Belfast based filmmaker, and have lived here most of my life, but I've always felt like an outsider here. That's where the idea of The Tourist first came from. Wen Miao can offer an outsider experience on life in Northern Ireland, and highlight its idiosyncrasies.

I chose to make her Chinese because the West is increasingly taking a back seat in the world. China's middle class is on the up. What middle class China thinks, and where it wants to spend its money is more important than ever now. It's educated and wealthy, and most importantly secular - pretty much a mirror image of the Northern Irish middle class.

Northern Ireland likes to style itself as the 'wee country'. We (like everyone else) think that we're the centre of the universe. Wen Miao doesn't think so. She sees the place and its history totally separate from its context. She can also turn a blind eye to attempts to package, narrate or commodify Northern Ireland. For her, the existential and the experiential are all that matters.

A Tourist Story was shot on my iphone, which allowed us access to all kinds of locations that would have turned away a full film crew. The intimacy and immediacy that the format offers, as well as the electricity of filming on location with non-actors really comes across in the verité, journalistic style. Embracing Godard's idea of the 'camera-stylo', A Tourist Story is a journal, a postcard, of a moment.