What’s Up Connection
Leaving June 30
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2h 1m
Directed by Masashi Yamamoto • 1990 • Japan, Hong Kong
Starring Reiko Arai, Tse Wai-Kit, Li Cheong
When Hong Kong teenager Chi Gau Shin (Tse Wai-Kit) wins a trip to Japan, he begins a journey that takes him from his small fishing village to Tokyo by way of Kamagasaki—the so-called slums of Osaka. On the way, he connects with a barely competent tour guide named Kumi and the shapeshifting, loudmouthed and lovable thief Akane. Upon returning home with this merry band of schemers, Gau Shin finds his family of resourceful counterfeiters on the verge of expropriation: a multinational conglomerate led by a ruthless Japanese developer has found the village, and is determined to raze it to build the new center of world trade! A breathless, kaleidoscopic evocation of a specific pan-Asian cultural experience as the 1990s drew near, this rare bilingual Japan–Hong Kong coproduction unfolds as part unhinged globalization mini-epic, part fringe documentary, as director Masashi Yamamoto brings his project—of capturing beauty and resilience in the margins of capital—to its maximalist apex.
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