An exhibition exploring the inner worlds of political prisoners during the White Terror era opens in Taipei today with an international award-winning virtual-
reality (VR) movie.
Inspired by and named after the VR movie The Man Who Couldn’t Leave (無法離開的人), the exhibition seeks to provide a glimpse of the “inner worlds” of several political prisoners who were deprived of their freedom and separated from their families, event producer Lin Mun-lee (林曼麗) told a news conference in Taipei on Thursday.
Photo courtesy of the Kaohsiung Film Archive
The exhibition, which runs until July 2 at the Museum of National Taipei University of Education, features copies of notes left behind by political prisoners from the White Terror era from 1949 to 1992 before they were executed by the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government.
It also displays letters between political prisoners and their families, among other documents, photographs and objects preserved by their descendants.
In addition, works by two contemporary Taiwanese artists — sound recordings and music clips by Wang Yu-jun (王榆鈞) and woodcut artworks by Lee Chia-hung (李佳泓) — provide visitors with an “immersive” experience, Lin added.
The exhibition also displays footage used by director Singing Chen (陳芯宜) for her VR film, The Man Who Couldn’t Leave, to allow for a better understanding of how the 35-minute-long work was made.
The VR film, which won awards at the Venice Immersive in Italy and the NewImages Festival in France, will also be shown at the museum during the exhibition.
Commissioned by the National Human Rights Museum, Chen’s film brings together the traumatic experiences of political prisoners jailed at a prison on outlying Green Island (綠島) in the 1950s and discusses how those experiences continued to affect the prisoners or their families years after they were executed or released.
Speaking at the news conference, Chen said she was pleased that after touring more than 10 cities overseas, the VR film is finally being shown to a Taiwanese audience.
She cited Lin Chuan-kai (林傳凱), the exhibition’s adviser, as saying that the values of transitional justice should lie in the efforts to understand the state of mind of people who were politically persecuted and what they have been through.
While admission to the exhibition is free, those who wish to watch the VR film must purchase a ticket in advance. The VR film will be screened once every hour starting at 10:10am until the museum closes at 6pm, from Tuesday to Sunday, with each session available for 10 people.
The film is also showing at the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute until July 2 and at the VR Film Lab in Kaohsiung until May 31.
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