Film Details

Long unavailable in the U.S., this kaleidoscopic Japanese New Wave 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, performance art, and black mascara. (Stanley Kubrick cited the film as a direct influence on A Clockwork Orange.) The film is set at Bar Genet, where the hot young “gay boy” hostess (trans actor Pîtâ of Kurosawa’s Ran) vies with the establishment’s reigning drag queenover the affections of the club’s drug-dealing owner. “Both transgender and transgenre, Funeral Parade of Roses updates Oedipus Rex by way of high-modernist Euro cinema, low melodrama, and avant-garde documentary.” –Village Voice. Adults only! Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 107 min.