TO BE CONTINUED

Producer Paul Chan is will be in attendance for the screening + Q&A, moderated by Yiman Wang, Professor in the Film & Digital Media Department at UC Santa Cruz.

The convenient, tired and vapid “East-meets-West” is a cliché that has for decades been used to sell the Hong Kong story to the world. Yet in the forgotten legend of Harry Odell, Hong Kong’s first impresario, a rediscovery of the city’s soul awaits.

Flamboyant and cigar-chomping, Odell was a Cairo-born, Shanghai-bred Russian Jew who stamped his mark on the cultural life of post-war Hong Kong. His hopeful, if chronically loss-making, adventures pushed the cultural frontiers of his adopted home, capturing the open, dynamic and inclusive spirit of a bygone era to leave a legacy that resonates to this day.

What began as a grassroot conservation campaign to save the iconic State Theatre in Hong Kong morphed into five years of research and interviews with those who witnessed Odell in action. The result: a film that is as much a study of one indomitable pioneer as it is a soul-searching journey of what defines Hong Kong.

This program is co-presented by KTSF and the Jewish Film Institute (JFI).

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