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South China Sea

Also showing: Habakari films

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Clarence Tsui

In an age where publicity is vital to success, one would expect entrepreneurs - especially people trading in big-screen glitter - to be keen to talk up the stock of their company.

Not filmmakers Koichi Imaizumi and Hiroki Iwasa, though, when discussing their independent collective, Habakari-Cinema+Records.

'Our production company is not a massive operation but just a group,' says Iwasa, primarily a musician and soundtrack composer.

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'The name is just for the occasions when we take films overseas - this is just a title that we need when we bring our films to festivals.'

Hong Kong's indie film collective, IndPanda, is hosting a retrospective of Habakari's projects at the Hong Kong Arts Centre this month.

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Titled First Love of the Happy Prince, the showcase follows the sold-out screenings of Imaizumi's Hatsu-Koi (First Love), which opened the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival last month. The film's mix of intense love scenes with reflections over issues such as single-sex marriage mirrors in style and content the short films Imaizumi and Iwasa have made since setting up shop in 1999.

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