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Funeral Parade of Roses
(Bara no sôretsu)

Screening on Film
Directed by Toshio Matsumoto.
With Pîtâ, Osamu Ogasawara, Toyosaburo Uchiyama.
Japan, 1969, 35mm, black & white, 105 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.
Print source: HFA

A carnivalesque melding of documentary verité and avant-garde psychedelia, Funeral Parade of Roses offers a shocking and ecstatic journey through the nocturnal underworld of Tokyo's Shinjuku neighborhood, following the strange misadventures of a rebellious drag queen fending off his/her rivals. Often cited as a major inspiration for Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Matsumoto's breakthrough film is a visually audacious and lyrically abstract testament to the vertiginous daring of the postwar Japanese avant-garde art and film scenes. Matsumoto orchestrates a series of quite astonishing visual set pieces, including actual performances by the influential Fluxus-inspired street theater groups, the Zero Jigen and Genpei Akasegawa.

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