Funeral Parade of Roses

Toshio Matsumoto
1969
Japan
105 min

Catford Mews

11 June

Friday

8:15pm

Toshio Matsumoto’s shattering, kaleidoscopic masterpiece is one of the most subversive and intoxicating films of the late 1960s. Loosely adapted from Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and set in Tokyo’s dazzling underground gay scene, the film follows Eddie (played by the androgynous actor Peter), a transgender hostess at Bar Genet, who has ignited a violent love triangle with drag queen Leda (Osamu Ogasawara) and the club’s owner Gonda (Yoshio Tsuchiya). Blending documentary interviews, fictional narratives, and his own unrestrained avant-garde footage, Matsumoto leads us into a dizzying whirl of images and sounds. The film offers a frank, openly erotic and unapologetic portrait of an unseen community of drag queens. and has been restored in 4k from the original 35mm negatives.