1969 | dir. Toshio Matsumoto | 105 min
2 Disc Set
Special Features:
- New 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative
- 8 newly remastered avant-garde short films by Toshio Matsumoto: Nishijin, The Song of Stone, Ecstasis, Metastasis, Expansion, Mona Lisa, Siki Soku Ze Ku and Atman
- Audio commentary by Chris D.
- U.S. Theatrical Trailer
- Original 1969 Japanese Theatrical Trailer
- New essay by Hirofumi Sakamoto, Director of the Postwar Japan Moving Image Archive
An unknown club dancer at the time, transgender actor Peter (from Kurosawa’s Ran) gives an astonishing Edie Sedgwick/Warhol superstar-like performance as 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 (Yoshio Tsuchiya, from Seven Samuri and Yojimbo). Director Toshio Matsumoto’s shattering, kaleidoscopic masterpiece is a key work of the Japanese New Wave and of queer cinema, and one of the most subversive and intoxicating films of the late 1960s. Funeral Parade of Roses has been restored in 4K from the original 35mm camera negative and sound elements.
"Few movies are as redolent of their times as Funeral Parade of Roses, a 1969 exemplar of Japanese countercultural ferment… its charms have scarcely wilted”
- J. Hoberman, The New York Times
"50 years later, this transgressive Japanese drama is still a party and a procession"
- Michael Nordine, IndieWire
"Toshio Matsumoto's 1969 film Funeral Parade of Roses is a heady affair, especially when seen in our aesthetically and politically conservative times. It imparts the thrill of witnessing the hedonism and lawlessness both sexual and artistic of a bygone culture. You also feel an almost tragic surge of melancholia watching it: where and when, you wonder, will cinema ever get quite this wild again?"
- Jonathan Romney, Film Comment
Please note this blu-ray release is locked for Region A (North America, Central America, South America, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia).
