A key work of the Japanese New Wave and of queer cinema, Funeral Parade has been restored in 4K from the original 35mm camera negative and sound elements. According to an incredibly youthful looking Matsumoto on the on-disk interview, he was scouted especially for the part while working as a transvestite bar hostess in Roppongi. No quotes approved yet for Funeral Parade of Roses. While these in themselves go some way in giving those attempting to sum up the essence of this work in a few choice phrases something to hang their hats on, the net effect of the film is considerably more substantial than such a dime-store Freudian denouement might suggest. Funeral Parade of Roses is a jagged shard of a film, an underground dream of longing and despair, an excursion away from narrative and a great example of … Eddie is passionately enveloped in destructive intimacy and a violently jealous love triangle, and as a result is confronted with traumatic childhood memories. Directed by Toshio Matsumoto. A … All praise due to Cinelicious for Funeral Parade of Roses is pivotal in that way simply because it was made. × Close. It's not like the title is unknown outside of Japan, having been pretty extensively discussed in books like David Desser's Eros Plus Massacre and Noel Burch's To the Distant Observer. Funeral Parade of Roses (薔薇の葬列, Bara no Sōretsu) is a 1969 Japanese drama film directed and written by Toshio Matsumoto, loosely adapted from Oedipus Rex and set in the underground gay culture of 1960s Tokyo. Many of these early works have been recently made available for the first time in Japan in the three-volume box-set Toshio Matsumoto Experimental Film Works 1961-1987. lícula dramàtica japonesa de 1969 dirigida i escrita per Toshio Matsumoto, adaptada vagament d'Èdip Rei i ambientada a la cultura gai underground de Tòquio dels anys seixanta. Released 20 March 2020. The story really remains only a ruse for a work that is best seen as a fascinating reflection of a long-vanished place and time, caught in a cross-current of international pop-cultural styles and influences and not dissimilar to what was going on in similar circles in other far-flung parts of the world. Because on the evidence of this kaleidoscopic view of Tokyo's vibrant gay countercultural scene of the late 1960s, his work represents something of an undiscovered treasure trove for the Western viewer. Toshi Matsumoto, Japan, 1969, 107 min.) It is one you'll want to keep coming back to, providing plenty to discuss and ponder upon between viewings. Some people even consider the opening scene of A Clockwork Orange, in which Alex has two eyes sewn onto the cuffs of his shirt, to be the implicit extension of the final scene of Funeral Parade of Roses in which Eddie gouges his eyes out. READ MORE: Exclusive: Cinelicious Restoring Japanese Queer Classic ‘Funeral Parade of Roses’ “Why did you become a gay boy?” one of them is … This all comes to a head with the film’s dizzying climax—fueled by a whirlwind of drugs, sex, music and undeniably fabulous glamour. Funeral Parade of Roses (薔薇の葬列 Bara no Sōretsu) is a 1969 Japanese drama directed and written by Toshio Matsumoto, as a loose adaptation of Oedipus Rex set in the gay underground of 1960's Japan. The experimental background is very much in evidence in his first feature. In Funeral Parade of Roses Matsumoto tackles the deceptiveness of self-images and the void that subjectivity is through the lens of cross-dressing and homosexuality. This is as much due to the freak charismas of those in front of the camera as the talent of the director behind it. Logged in users can submit quotes. This in itself is something of an enigma. It would be difficult to imagine the film with anyone else in his high heels. Funeral Parade of Roses (Streaming Video) : 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. Submit a Quote from 'Funeral Parade of Roses'. In the essay booklet, musician and Japanese film aficionado Jim O'Rourke charts the historical and cultural circumstances leading up to Tokyo's Summer of 69 when the youth movement came of age, while Roland Domenig of the University of Vienna provides the low-down on the Art Theatre Guild production-distribution-exhibition system that revitalised Japanese cinema in the 60s by making works such as these possible. (Domenig was responsible for organising an exhaustive retrospective of the works of the Art Theatre Guild at the Viennale in 2003.) The colourful underground milieu, populated by a rag-tag collection of cross-dressers, bohemians, druggies and drop-outs, bares easy comparisons with the environment fostered by Andy Warhol and his disciples at his Factory studio in New York - at one point the American underground film scene is explicitly mentioned when one of the characters quotes Jonas Mekas (though another has to correct the mispronunciation of Mekas' name.) – Don’t be critical or no one will work with you. – Don’t worry. Audiences, for possibly the first time, were given a glimpse into the stories of queer … Young people nowadays think differently. Featured peformers: Material Girl (producer, vocals), Coin Locker Kid (featured), Krullebol (clarinet). Just to put the name into context, Matsumoto was born in Nagoya in 1932 and rose to become one of the key players in the early Japanese experimental scene with short films like Silver Ring (Ginrin, 1955), the 18-minute documentary on the renewal of the US-Japan security pact Ampo Jouyaku (1959), 300 Ton Trailer (1959), Record of a Long Wide Line (Shiroi Nagai Suji no Kiroku, 1960) and Magnetic Scramble (1968). Funeral Parade of Roses is his first feature-length work, and was made possible through the support of the Art Theatre Guild, who produced and distributed the film. One can immediately see how he caught the filmmaker's eye: Peter, who subsequently played the Fool in Akira Kurosawa's Ran and turned up in several other films during the 70s (the most familiar mainstream appearance perhaps being the 1970 entry of the long-running Shintaro Katsu series Zatoichi, Fire Festival), certainly has all the right moves, not to mention a doe-eyed vulnerability and the ability to project a potently polymorphous form of sensuality that belies his gender. But I was really amazed given its international reputation to learn that Eureka's DVD release actually represents the first of any kind for the foreign home video market. Be the first to hear about our new reviews, exclusive interviews and features. Japanese. “She loved roses, and they had to be artificial,” someone remarks after the death of Eddie’s precursor at the Club Genet. This in itself is something of an enigma. ÏÎ¿Ï ÏάÏÏÎ¹Î½Î¿Ï aglimpseof 01, THE JUNTA TRAP | ΠΧÎÎ¥ÎΤÎÎÎÎ ÎÎÎÎÎ, A THING LIKE YOU AND ME | INTRO & GUIDELINES, HOTEL WOMEN / ΣΥÎΤÎÎΠΡÎÎÎÎΤÎÎÎ (ÎΥΤÎ)Î ÎΡΤΡÎΤΠÎÎÎ ÎÎ ÎÎΣÎÎÎÎ, ÎΣΤÎΡÎÎΣ ÎÎ Î ÎÎΥΤÎΡΠΧÎΡÎ. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features – You’re just encouraging them. The usual exemplary abundance of extras on Eureka's release should remove any lingering questions about the how, when, where, and why of the film's production. Funeral Parade of Roses (Bara No Sôretsu) (Dir. Funeral Parade of Roses is released as part of the BFI Japan 2020 season, now on BFI Player Click here for Japan 2020 What’s the story: In Tokyo, 1969, transsexual Eddie (Pîtâ) attempts to forget the traumatic events of her past. Funeral Parade of Roses itself is equivalently radical, caught somewhere between freeform sketch comedy, gonzo documentary, and irony-soaked Warholian melodrama, it’s convulsive rhythms reflected in Matsumoto’s oft-anarchic shooting style. And anyway, though its focus on experimental filmmaking technique is very much in keeping many of the other films produced by the Art Theatre Guild - typically those of Nagisa Oshima, Shohei Imamura, Masahiro Shinoda, Susumu Hani and Kiju Yoshida - Matsumoto's film never quite seems like the dry meta-textual exercise in formalism of some of his contemporaries. Trailer to Toshio Matsumoto's Funeral Parade of Roses, distributed by EUREKA in their The Masters of Cinema series. I offer these foreign examples primarily as descriptive points of reference. While Matsumoto readily acknowledges the early impact of nouvelle vague director Alain Resnais on his work, Funeral Parade of Roses amounts to much, much more than the sum of its influences. Admirably carrying the main weight of the drama on his shoulders among a cast predominantly made up of non-professionals and counter-cultural mini-celebrities is a player known solely as Peter. Toshio Matsumoto (1969); Japan, 105m Starring: Pîtâ, Osamu Ogasawara, Yoshimi Jô Programmed by: Madi Lou Alexander March 28th through APRIL 3RD CLick here to watch! Godard may be his spiritual predecessor, but "Funeral Parade of Roses" is a heady, emotionally resonant work of art that stands apart from Matsumoto's influences, and even his influencees. She makes me mad. Funeral Parade of Roses, with its fun and free gender fluidity, sexuality, drugs and rock’n’roll must have been a shocking fuck-you to Japanese social mores when it was released. Matsumoto himself is on hand to provide a 23-minute interview and a feature-length commentary concerning the making of the film. The trials and tribulations of Eddie and other transvestites in Japan. In the role of the androgynous bar worker Eddie, Peter wrestles with inner demons while jostling for the affections of drug-dealing cabaret-manager Gonda (Tsuchiya; one of the few professionals in the cast with several roles behind him in Kurosawa films such as The Seven Samurai and Throne of Blood) with rival cross-dresser Reda (Ogasawara) and taking centre stage in a documentary being made about Tokyo's gay culture. Funeral Parade of Roses, a Single by Material Girl. Looking back at it from the light of the early twenty-first century, one of the most astonishing things about Funeral Parade of Roses is just how little seen it has been. by Jasper Sharp. Those aware of the mythological underpinnings of Freudian theory might have some inkling as what to expect in the gruesome closing scenes. Finally the experimental melange of dramatised sequences and documentary footage assembled in a cocktail of freeze frames, onscreen text, sped-up sequences, solarised or over-exposed shots, distorted wavering news footage filmed directly from TV and stroboscopic cross-cuts immediately puts one in mind of the French New Wave. The exhibition For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968–1979 Trying to explain the pleasures of such a scrambled impressionistic piece as Funeral Parade of Roses in plot terms is a pretty fruitless exercise, although the disjointed narrative does reach fever pitch in the latter moments, with developments inspired by the ancient legend of Oedipus Rex so succinctly described in the dark ditty written by 50s American singer/satirist/maths professor Tom Lehrer: 'There once lived a man called Oedipus Rex / You must have heard about his odd complex / His name appears in Freud's index / Because he loved his mother ...'. It stars Peter as the protagonist, a young transgender woman, and features Osamu Ogasawara, Yoshio Tsuchiya and Emiko Azuma. screens Friday, March 13, at 7 p.m. Matsumoto’s narrative is therefore not only an evocative Or the attraction that both heroes feel towards violence. ‘Funeral Parade of Roses’ (‘Bara no sôretsu’): Film Review Toshio Matsumoto mixes fiction and documentary techniques in 'Funeral Parade of Roses,' … Would that the film itself were so easy to ensnare in words. One can only hope that the belated rectification of this grave oversight will serve in some degree to hoist its director Toshio Matsumoto's name up to a higher level on the totem pole of internationally visible filmmaking greats than it hitherto has been and lead to more widespread releases of his other films. With Pîtâ, Osamu Ogasawara, Yoshimi Jô, Koichi Nakamura. That is the first invitation you will ever receive to turn off your screen or leave the theater, because this nearly-metaphysical parade of memoir fragments and… Review by Sally Jane Black ★★★★★ Funeral Parade of Roses (薔薇の葬列, Bara no Sōretsu) is a 1969 Japanese drama film directed and written by Toshio Matsumoto, loosely adapted from Oedipus Rex and set in the underground gay culture of 1960s Tokyo. It stars Peter as a young drag queen, and features Osamu Ogasawara, Yoshio Tsuchiya and Emiko Azuma. Though the following decades have seen Matsumoto continuing to practice within the fields of experimental cinema and video installation, subsequent theatrical features, which include Pandemonium (Shura, 1971), A 16-Year-Old's War (Juroku-sai no Senso, 1972) and Dogura Magura (1988), have been rather thin on the ground. Heavily redolent of the era in which it was made, this is a work whose striking images will remain etched in your brain a long time after they've faded from the screen. Never mind. Re-Agitator: A Decade of Writing on Takashi Miike, Behind the Pink Curtain - The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema, Iron Man - The Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto, The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film. Whether or not Funeral Parade of Roses erases all definitions of Genres: Experimental Hip Hop, Jazz Rap. Stay up to date with the latest and best in Japanese cinema. No less than Stanley Kubrick cited … Funeral Parade of Roses * – She’s shameless, that girl! The only (minor) disappointment is that Eureka couldn't track down any of the original cast for interviews, but this is slight nitpicking. Funeral Parade of Roses (Kanopy) Dir. The exuberant costumes and pop-art sensibilities recall all the excesses of the European swinging 60s scene as celebrated in William Klein's kitsch cult oddity Who Are You, Polly Magoo? Japanese. At one point, one of Guevara’s gang declares, “All definitions of cinema have been erased. Looking back at it from the light of the early twenty-first century, one of the most astonishing things about Funeral Parade of Roses is just how little seen it has been. All the doors are now open,” then tells us whom he’s quoting—Mekas. (1966), and it is rumoured that Matsumoto's false-eyelashed protagonists served as the inspiration for Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. “Few movies are as redolent of their times as Funeral Parade of Roses, a 1969 exemplar of Japanese … Funeral Parade of Roses Bara no sôretsu 1969 1 hr 45 mins Director Toshio Matsumoto's shattering, kaleidoscopic masterpiece is one of the most subversive and intoxicating films of the late Read more .). It also boasts its more playful moments, for example Reda and Eddie's under-cranked showdown, alongside its more poignantly tragic dimension revealed through flashbacks to Eddie's traumatic fatherless childhood.