Virgin Road

KWAK Seoyoung, PARK Cheolhwan, OH Lahi, TU Bing Yun | 2024 | 26min

In 1973, 25 Taiwanese female workers were drowned in a ferry accident while on their way to work at Gaoxiong’s Export Processing Zone. These female workers were buried collectively under Taiwan’s patriarchy system for being unmarried women, and they became otherized in the social realms of both nation and family and wandered around Gaoxiong as virgin ghosts.

This film is a road movie that follows along these female ghosts buried in ‘twenty-five woman’s grave’. This cinematic process traversing the political and social backgrounds of Asia, from Incheon in Korea to the locations of disasters in Gaoxiong, Taiwan, questions about the reality in which Asian women had to become ghosts in the urban history dotted with capitalism and industrialization.