Funeral Parade of Roses (Matsumoto, 1969): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6pm
This presentation, part of the Japan season at BFI Soutbank, also includes a pre-recorded intro by Professor Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano, Kyoto University. The film is also being shown on December14th and 27th. Full details here.
Time Out review:
Like Nagisa Oshima's contemporary Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, this still extraordinary film was a response to the 1968 student riots. But Toshio Matsumoto goes further than Oshima - into Shinjuku 2-chome, Tokyo's gay ghetto, to enact a queer revamp of the Oedipus myth. Popular young trannie Eddie (Peter, later the Fool in Ran) throws himself into affairs with a black GI and a Japanese hippie to drown out his memories of killing his mother when he caught her inflagrante with a stranger. Then he shacks up with Gonda, manager of the gay bar Genet, only to find out that the man is his long-lost father. Matsumoto splinters the story's time-frame, splashes captions across the frame and cuts in bits of ciné vérité and interviews with the cast - making it one of the most formally advanced films of the psychedelic decade.
Tony Rayns
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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