THE LOST ARCADE

Directed by Kurt Vincent

Asian American Panorama / USA / 2015 / Documentary / 79 mins / English / DCP / West Coast Premiere

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THE LOST ARCADE

UltraStar Mission Valley
Saturday, April 30, 2016 5:25 pm

Description

Official Selection, 2016 International Film Festival Rotterdam

Filmmakers Kurt Vincent and Irene Chin scheduled to attend

In the waning years of the video arcade boom, the Chinatown Fair was legion: the last place to check out the newest games, the surviving oasis of competition and community. But even the famed CF would succumb to the explosion of home consoles and PC gaming, and with its inevitable closure came the end of an era for a generation for whom CF was not just an amusement, but a home.

Filmmakers Kurt Vincent and Irene Chin were there for the arcade’s final nights, but more importantly, for its aftermath, when a racial utopia gentrified into the unthinkable, and remarkable figures like the 80-year-old Pakistani owner of CF, his ambitious Chinese American right-hand man, and the foster home runaway who became a face of CF, would see the writing on the wall and in its face pencil in their own legacies, ushering in a future of communal gaming that is also the future of Chinatown, greater New York City, and so many transforming urban centers around the country. –Brian Hu

Co-presented by: APAC, San Diego Art house Movies