Funeral Parade of Roses (Bara no sôretsu, Toshio Matsumoto, 1969)

Finally (and gloriously) restored, Toshio Matsumoto’s Funeral Parade of Roses is a dazzling and subversive portrayal of Tokyo’s underground world of drag queen bars and nightlife. Androgynous actor “Peter” (Shinnosuke Ikehata) stars as Eddie, the hostess at Bar Genet, who finds herself at the center of a love triangle between the bar’s owner, Gonda, and alpha drag queen Leda. An avant-garde classic of the Japanese New Wave and queer cinema, this formalistic tour-de-force needs to be seen on the big screen! (105 mins., 4K DCP)