Cancelled: Captured
***In light of the spread of the Coronavirus (Covid-19), the Korean Cultural Centre UK has taken the decision to cancel this programme.
We apologise for the disappointment and inconvenience caused. If you have any questions on this, please contact us at info@kccuk.org.uk.
We really appreciate your patience and thank you for your continued support.***
Captured is not only a UK military training video, but also an engaging work of drama by a talented filmmaker. Never previously screened.
A group of British soldiers are taken captive and transferred to a miserable Chinese-run prison camp. There they face a variety of assaults on their decency: torture, starvation, and endless haranguing ‘re-education’ sessions led by English-speaking Chinese officers. The psychological torments faced by the POWs eventually have them turning on one another.
Made as a curious kind of training film for selected military personnel, Captured is a far better work of cinema than the only British mainstream film about the war, A Hill in Korea (1956). The Americans would term the re-education sessions inflicted on captured men ‘brain-washing’. It became a key rhetorical weapon throughout the Cold War. Hollywood would turn out a number of POW films focused on brain-washing, from the Ronald Regan vehicle Prisoner of War (1954) to the great paranoid classic, The Manchurian Candidate (1962).