Funeral Parade of Roses

angeldromero

If you're reading this, stop reading, GO WATCH THIS FILM.

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.

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!

The Ghost of Kaspar Hauser

Iconoclastic, self-referential, meta-cinema... sexual empowerment, ideological warfare, gender discourse... Exploring the relationship between sexual and political radicalism. Matsumoto's use of visual distortion in that are-bure-boke (rough, blurred, out-of-focus) manner of '60s Japan is incredibly compelling as a tool for subversion of dominant social order and attacking conventional modes of filmic representation.

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.

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?!?

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.

dionysus67

It may lack the rigor in the modernist techniques of a "Nanami" or "Tanin no Kao", yet Matsumoto's cocktail of transgression impresses mainly because, like Fassbinder, it locates transgression into tragedy itself. The Pasolinian nods work superbly in the denouement and the pastiche of freeze-frames, fast-forward slapstick, rolls as well as the breaching techniques with the public make for truly radical filmmaking.