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FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES

1969 | dir: Toshio Matsumoto | 105 min

New 4K Restoration

Long unavailable in the U.S., director Toshio Matsumoto’s 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 Kurosawa’s RAN) gives an astonishing Edie Sedgwick/Warhol superstar-like performance as hot young thing Eddie, hostess at Bar Genet — where she’s 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 Japan’s 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, Peter’s ravishing Eddie is something to behold. “She has bad manners, all she knows is coquetry,” complains her rival Leda – but in fact, Eddie’s 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, FUNERAL PARADE is being beautifully restored in 4k from the original 35mm camera negative and sound elements for re-release in 2017.
 

IN THEATERS
June 9- July 2, 2017 Quad Cinema – HELD OVER New York, NY get ’em
June 9-15, 2017 Alamo Drafthouse New Mission – HELD OVER San Francisco, CA get ’em
June 9-23, 2017 Royal Theater Toronto, CA get ’em
June 14, 2017 Alamo Drafthouse Yonkers Yonkers, NY get ’em
June 15-22, 2017 Alamo Drafthouse Sloans Lake Denver, CO get ’em
June 15-22, 2017 Northwest Film Forum Seattle, WA get ’em
June 16-July 8, 2017 The Cinefamily – HELD OVER Los Angeles, CA get ’em
June 16-29, 2017 Cinémathèque Québécoise – HELD OVER Montreal, QC get ’em
June 16-18, 2017 Hollywood Theatre Portland, OR get ’em
June 16-23, 2017 The Frida Cinema Santa Ana, CA get ’em
June 19-22, 2017 AFI Silver Theatre Silver Spring, MD get ’em
June 23-30, 2017 Row House Cinema Pittsburgh, PA get ’em
June 23, 2017 The Texas Theatre Dallas, TX get ’em
June 29-July 5, 2017 Austin Film Society Austin, TX get ’em
June 29-July 5, 2017 Pacific Cinematheque Vancouver, Canada get ’em
June 30-July 4, 2017 Parkway Theater Baltimore, MD get ’em
July 7-20, 2017 Roxie Theater San Francisco, CA get ’em
July 8-14, 2017 International House Philadelphia, PA get ’em
July 12-14, 2017 Ragtag Theatre Columbia, MO get ’em
July 12-16, 2017 Belcourt Theater Nashville, TN get ’em
July 21-27, 2017 Broad Theater New Orleans, LA get ’em
July 28-30, 2017 Brattle Theater Boston, MA get ’em
August 23, 2017 Wexner Center for the Arts Columbus, OH get ’em
September 8-9, 2017 Speed Art Museum Louisville, KY get ’em
September 14 & 17, 2017 Cleveland Cinematheque Cleveland, OH get ’em
September 15-16, 2017 The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI get ’em
September 27, 2017 Kentucky Theater Lexington, KY get ’em
September 29, 2017 Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Montreal, QC get ’em
November 17-19, 2017 Trylon Microcinema Minneapolis, MN get ’em


VIEW TRAILER