CHINATOWN | VR MOVIE

History is made of movement, and as Walter Benjamin said, “its face is always turned toward the past and its body toward the future.”

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While contemporary technology can simulate historical events with remarkable fidelity, it cannot replicate historical authenticity. Nevertheless, this capacity for imaginative reconstruction is what renders narratives so compelling. We are witnessing a continuous procession, a parade that mirrors the trajectory of human evolution.

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From the vast expanse of historical moments, we have chosen two significant events in Manhattan's Chinatown: the 1982 Chinese Women Garment Laborers' Protest and the 1912 New York Suffragist Movement. Both of these historical episodes illuminate the experiences of marginalized women in Chinatown, including Mabel Lee, a young woman who led a suffragist march on horseback in 1912, and the anonymous women garment laborers of Chinatown in the 1980s.

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These movements, like the enduring power of memory, persist.