With dresses, love letters, even shop bills, exhibit recalls tragic life of screen siren

The Hong Kong Film Archive hopes an unprecedented exhibition on the life of actress Linda Lin Dai, showing her movie history along with personal memorabilia, will lead to similar displays of other local stars.

The exhibition - centred on a recreation of Lin's bedroom as it was when she died in 1964 - is unusual in that it gathers her films, posters and possessions under one roof. In the past, a star's movie memorabilia has been displayed by the archive, while personal items have gone on show at the Heritage Museum.

'This time, the museums are working together in one exhibition,' archive programmer Winnie Fu Wai-yee said. 'We hope similar exhibitions can be held for prominent film figures, like Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing, in the future.'

Regarded in her heyday as the Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor of Asian cinema, Lin committed suicide in her bedroom on July 17, 1964, aged 29. Her grief-stricken husband, Lung Shun-shing, kept the room exactly as it was for more than 40 years until he died in 2007.

After his death, their son Lung Tzong-hann donated hundreds of her possessions to the government and the archive documented her bedroom before it was cleared.

'We wanted to start with the myth,' Ms Fu said of the exhibition, which opens at the film archive in Sai Wan Ho tomorrow. 'People have been wondering why she ended her life in her glory days and how her husband kept her things untouched for more than four decades. The way Lin Dai decorated her flat and designed her fashion shows she was really a star leading the trend.' The archive's head, Richie Lam Kok-sing, said it was the first exhibition to put a film star in the context of her home life. 'The most touching was the moment I entered her bedroom. I could feel her presence.'