Funeral Parade of Roses

El Biffo

1960's Japanese trippiness centering on a group of drag queens smoking grass. Some great images. Supposedly influential, I suppose every subsequent avant-garde stoner drag queen film owes a nod to this. Must-see for those who love weird 60's Japanese films, like "Go, Go Second-time Virgin". Created for a cult audience, and it deserves the cult status it achieved.

msmichel

Matsumoto's film is an unsung LGBT classic mixing aspects of experimental film with counter culture, documentary and drag culture. Even with its over the top grand guignol finish (with a self aware irreverence) this impresses. Recently rediscovered and making the re-release rounds this year. Fascinating, sexy and beautiful.

EdieEmm

More linear/narrative than I was expecting... A gorgeous (4K restoration on the big screen!), playful, feverishly intertextual, queer 60s genre mash-up, that's part clever documentary & part 3-wall avant-garde theatre. Recursion, inversion, distortion, disruption, as the great inescapable levellers; as our fate! We're *all* Oedipus/Electra; all (ahem)'wounds' & 'blades'. Subversive, confrontational, iconoclastic fun.

Jason

FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES is almost like an eastern variation on the films that made Dušan Makavejev famous during the same period. It similarly has the quality of a portmanteau: a trifecta of approaches to countercultural cinema, weaved rather than bundled. Here we have: 1) a quasi-documentary about the performance of queer identity; 2) paradigm smashing drop-out freak-out; 3) cryptomythic mind-fuck. Yes, please!

Scorpio Velvet

My god, what an unusual film I've watched. Where to begin? The film has to do with homosexuality and other things in the 1960's Japan I know, but contains a good but interesting use of from avant-garde to documented-style footage all leading up to one of the most shocking endings I've ever seen in any film like this before. This would be a fine pair with ether FELLINI SATYRICON or anything by Teryama nevertheless.

Max Slobodin

the personal is always political. [REDACTED] lovemaking as a revolutionary act. the roles we play. masks/mirrors/makeup. *MISSING REEL* when we [REDACTED] ourselves, one is compelled to be lost in the din of our own evil. a sociological schema that [REDACTED] impinge upon cinema (a reality?). the knife that we hide even from our own psyche. *MISSING REEL* lysergic denial. a referendum on our very souls...

João Rocha

It's really quite amazing just thinking that this was made in the 60's... How someone could made this with such sense of freedom?!?

Wee Hunk

While not quite as good as 'The Man Who Left His Will on Film', which was made the next year, there are many similarities. It definitely got bogged down in some of the sequences and didn't quite know what it wanted to be.