|
Event
Funeral Parade of Roses
Long unavailable in the U.S., director Toshio Matsumotos shattering, kaleidoscopic masterpiece is one of the most subversive and intoxicating films of the late 1960s: a headlong dive into a dazzling, unseen Tokyo night-world of drag queen bars and fabulous divas, fueled by booze, drugs, fuzz guitars, performance art and black mascara. No less than Stanley Kubrick cited the film as a direct influence on his own dystopian classic A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. An unknown club dancer at the time, transgender actor Peter (from Kurosawas RAN) gives an astonishing Edie Sedgwick/Warhol superstar-like performance as hot young thing Eddie, hostess at Bar Genet where shes ignited a violent love-triangle with reigning drag queen Leda (Osamu Ogasawara) for the attentions of club owner Gonda (played by Kurosawa regular Yoshio Tsuchiya, from SEVEN SAMURAI and YOJIMBO). One of Japans leading experimental filmmakers, Matsumoto bends and distorts time here like Resnais in LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, freely mixing documentary interviews, Brechtian film-within- a-film asides, Oedipal premonitions of disaster, his own avant-garde shorts, and even on-screen cartoon balloons, into a dizzying whirl of image + sound.
Featuring breathtaking black-and- white cinematography by Tatsuo Suzuki that rivals the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, FUNERAL PARADE offers a frank, openly erotic and unapologetic portrait of an underground community of drag queens. Whether laughing with drunken businessmen, eating ice cream with her girlfriends, or fighting in the streets with a local girl gang, Peters ravishing Eddie is something to behold. She has bad manners, all she knows is coquetry, complains her rival Leda but in fact, Eddies bad manners are simply being too gorgeous for this world. Her stunning presence, in bell- bottom pants, black leather jacket and Brian Jones hair-do, is a direct threat to the social order, both in the Bar Genet and in the streets of Tokyo. A key work of the Japanese New Wave and of queer cinema.
Few movies are as redolent of their times as Funeral Parade of Roses, a 1969 exemplar of Japanese countercultural fermentits charms have scarcely wilted. J. Hoberman, New York Times
"Matsumoto mashes a barrage of audio-visual styles, tones and gimmicks into a brash kaleidoscope of filmic possibility." - LA Times
"A gender-fluid take on Oedipus Rex that takes cues from Jonas Mekas (who's name-checked in the film), Seijun Suzuki, and Andy Warhol, Funeral is a frenetic hodgepodge of styles and moods."- The Stranger
"A cheeky and provocative experimental look at a largely unknown subculture." - Hollywood Reporter
"You will walk away from Matsumoto's film with a newfound appreciation of what movies can be." - Simon Abrams, RogerEbert.com
|
|
 |
LocationSuns Cinema (View)
3107 Mount Pleasant Street NW
Washington, DC 20010
United States
Categories
Contact
|
