What's Up Connection

Details

This listing is for the standard edition Blu-ray. The limited edition slipcover (designed by Connor Willumsen) was limited to 1,000 units and is sold out. The two versions are identical, aside from the slipcover.

Named after Yasujiro Ozu’s custom-made, tatami-level, crab-like tripod, Kani is a new home video label dedicated to leveling the gaze and furthering the understanding of Asian cinema in North America. Focused on genre-defying films, Kani aims to expand the canon, bolster up-and-coming filmmakers and reintroduce repertory classics in context. Vinegar Syndrome’s sister company, OCN Distribution, is thrilled to be representing this diverse and unique home video line!

When Hong Kong teenager Chi Gau Shin (Tse Wai Kit, School on Fire) wins a trip to Japan, he unleashes a chain of events that will soon bring him from the secluded fishing village of Po Toi O 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, loud-mouthed and loveable 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!

Masashi Yamamoto one-ups Robinson's Garden (1987) with the go-for-broke ambition of What's Up Connection: a rare bilingual Japan-Hong Kong coproduction that unfolds as part unhinged globalization mini-epic, fringe documentary and portrait of a crazy family (the “Chi” of the Chi family a homonym for “crazy” in Cantonese). A breathless, kaleidoscopic evocation of a specific pan-Asian cultural experience as the 1990s drew near, What's Up has it all: Hongkongers looking to Japan for shopping and recreation; Japanese looking to Hong Kong for investment and opportunity – and the gangsters, hackers, thieves and Taoist priests stuck in-between it all. Scored by avant-garde trumpeter Toshinori Kondo, here is a lively film that bursts at the seams with possibility and brings Yamamoto’s project – of capturing beauty and resilience in the margins of capital – to its maximalist apex.

directed by: Masashi Yamamoto
starring: Tse Wai Kit,Reiko Arai
1990 / 120 min / 1.85:1 / Japanese DTS-HD MA 2.0

Additional info:

• Region A Blu-ray
• An Interview with Director Masashi Yamamoto, Part II (22MIN, 2022)
• Interview with Critic and Filmmaker Shu Kei (14MINS, 2022)
• Interview with Actor Tse Wai Kit & Priduction Manager Bill Yip (17MINS, 2022)
• Interview with Assitant Director Michael Wong (9MINS, 2022)
• Booklet with New Writing By Cheng Yu Shing
• Nova Alpha Credit Card*
• Japanese Theatrical Trailer
• Optional English Subtitles
• Optional Chinese Subtitles
• New Cover Art by Connor Willumsen