Two Films by Masashi Yamamoto
2 Episodes
Celebrating the drop-outs, slackers, bohemians, and misfits who live in opposition to the mainstream, the freewheeling, blissfully batty films of punk auteur Masashi Yamamoto are gonzo transmissions from the fringes of the Japanese underground. Defiantly DIY rebukes to the capitalist excesses of Japan in the 1980s and early ’90s, the newly restored revelations ROBINSON’S GARDEN and WHAT’S UP CONNECTION—the former lensed by frequent Jim Jarmusch collaborator Tom DiCillo; the latter a rare bilingual Japan–Hong Kong coproduction—are a perfect introduction to Yamamoto’s cinema of outsiders.
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2:00:17Episode 1
Robinson’s Garden
Episode 1
Directed by Masashi Yamamoto • 1987 • Japan
Starring Kumiko Ota, Kou Machida, Tuko UenoOn a drunken walk home, bohemian drug dealer Kumi (Kumiko Ohta) discovers an abandoned building on the outskirts of Tokyo. Attracted by the vast, untapped space overrun with luxuriant vegetation (and its pote...
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2:01:41Episode 2
What’s Up Connection
Episode 2
Directed by Masashi Yamamoto • 1990 • Japan, Hong Kong
Starring Reiko Arai, Tse Wai-Kit, Li CheongWhen 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...