Synopsis:

Join us for a special post-screening discussion on this film and the broader emergence of Japanese experimental cinema with National Gallery curator Silke Schmickl. This programme is held in conjunction with the exhibition Awakenings: Art in Society in Asia 1960s-1990s at National Gallery Singapore

One of Japan's leading experimental filmmakers, Director Toshio Matsumoto's shattering, kaleidoscopic 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, fuzz guitars, performance art and black mascara. No less than Stanley Kubrick cited the film as a direct influence on his own dystopian classic 'A Clockwork Orange'.

An unknown club dancer at the time, transgender actor Peter (from Kurosawa's RAN) gives an astonishing Edie Sedgwick/Warhol superstar-like performance as hot young 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 (played by Kurosawa regular Yoshio Tsuchiya, from SEVEN SAMURAI and YOJIMBO).

Featuring breathtaking black-and- white cinematography by Tatsuo Suzuki that rivals the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, FUNERAL PARADE offers a frank, openly erotic and unapologetic portrait of an underground community of drag queens.