As I mentioned before, the Kim Hiro incident and particularly the way it was covered by the media, inspired a number of filmmakers to explore new cinematic methods that would examine the concepts of timeliness and actuality in cinema and the connection between documentary and fiction. Toshio Matsumoto, in a precursor to his feature debut, “Funeral Parade of Roses” came up with a 15-minute short which was presented through three projectors running different images at different speeds simultaneously, in an effort to mimic the visual layout of the newspaper, in a frame split in two that features completely different images.
Among the many images presented in frantic speed here, we have various of Kim Hiro, as the one with his portrait on the left side and newspapers on the right, which is held by an individual taking part in a street performance. Continuing this segment of the film, in which...
Among the many images presented in frantic speed here, we have various of Kim Hiro, as the one with his portrait on the left side and newspapers on the right, which is held by an individual taking part in a street performance. Continuing this segment of the film, in which...
- 4/16/2024
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
Allow me to start with a very personal note. I think that the 60s and early 70s was the most interesting period in the history of Japanese cinema, with the avant-garde approach that emerged at the time resulting in some of the most unique films ever to see the light of day. At the same time, and considering that the majority of works about Japanese cinema history we get our hands in the West are written by Western writers, it is always interesting to see how much more light locals can shed on the subject. Lastly, and in the same path, considering that the “Aesthetics of Shadow” by Daisuke Miyao was truly masterful, I was really eager to read “Cinema of Actuality”.
on Amazon by clicking on the image below
After a prologue, which is, as usual in academic works, the most complicated part in the whole book,...
on Amazon by clicking on the image below
After a prologue, which is, as usual in academic works, the most complicated part in the whole book,...
- 3/30/2024
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
“Funeral Parade of Roses” has to be one of the most successful avant-garde and experimental cinema masterpieces the world has ever seen. And no, I am not even exaggerating. This irreverent psychosexual reinterpretation of the myth of Oedipus Rex by director Toshio Matsumoto – dense with visual exploration, meta-cinematography, and rebellion – is one of the cornerstones of the Japanese New Wave of the 1960s. Through a temporally deconstructed narrative as chaotic as it is ingenious, Matsumoto encapsulates and crystallizes the generational drama of Japanese youth.
Set in Tokyo at the peak of its socio-political turmoil, the work follows the ups and downs of Eddie, a young transgender woman grappling with her identity. The protagonist works at Genet, a gay bar in Tokyo managed by the gangster Gonda, whom she is in love with. Leda (Osamu Ogasawara) is the “Madame” and drag queen's leader, as well as being Gonda's (Yoshio Tsuchiya) partner.
Set in Tokyo at the peak of its socio-political turmoil, the work follows the ups and downs of Eddie, a young transgender woman grappling with her identity. The protagonist works at Genet, a gay bar in Tokyo managed by the gangster Gonda, whom she is in love with. Leda (Osamu Ogasawara) is the “Madame” and drag queen's leader, as well as being Gonda's (Yoshio Tsuchiya) partner.
- 2/13/2024
- by Siria Falleroni
- AsianMoviePulse
Note: the following blog piece ran earlier this year. We’re re-posting today in honor of Trans Awareness Week, November 12-18. Special thanks to author Adam Vargas.
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It’s no secret that the moving image can leave a lasting impact, both consciously and subconsciously. This is especially true regarding images of people engaged in struggle and/or enjoying wild success—a phenomenon that supports the necessity for thoughtful representation of people of all backgrounds and experiences in film.
Today, representation is too often conflated with diversity, but they’re not exactly the same thing. Representation goes beyond the surface inclusion of different types of people popular media—it’s about lived experience and authenticity. Of course there are all types of communities that haven’t received much authentic representations of themselves in traditional cinema. For example: the trans community, which is itself unique and disparate far beyond what has been rendered onscreen,...
***
It’s no secret that the moving image can leave a lasting impact, both consciously and subconsciously. This is especially true regarding images of people engaged in struggle and/or enjoying wild success—a phenomenon that supports the necessity for thoughtful representation of people of all backgrounds and experiences in film.
Today, representation is too often conflated with diversity, but they’re not exactly the same thing. Representation goes beyond the surface inclusion of different types of people popular media—it’s about lived experience and authenticity. Of course there are all types of communities that haven’t received much authentic representations of themselves in traditional cinema. For example: the trans community, which is itself unique and disparate far beyond what has been rendered onscreen,...
- 11/15/2023
- by Adam Vargas
- Film Independent News & More
Juro Kara is a Japanese avant-garde playwright, theatre director, author, actor, and songwriter. He was at the forefront of the Angura (“underground”) theatre movement in Japan, while as an actor, he cooperated with some of the biggest names of the Japanese movie industry, including Shohei Imamura, Masahiro Shinoda, Shuji Terayama, Toshio Matsumoto and Koji Wakamatsu. As a director, however, he only came up with one title, co-produced by Atg “Sea of Genkai”, an unusual type of yakuza film that focuses intently on the treatment of Korean women in the hands of the Japanese.
Follow our coverage of Atg by clicking on the link below
The movie begins with a young man causing a ruckus on a high traffic street, until an older man takes him under his wing. The young man is named Taguchi and seems to have no one in his life, which is why he almost immediately becomes...
Follow our coverage of Atg by clicking on the link below
The movie begins with a young man causing a ruckus on a high traffic street, until an older man takes him under his wing. The young man is named Taguchi and seems to have no one in his life, which is why he almost immediately becomes...
- 9/11/2023
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
Arbelos, a Los Angeles-based boutique film distribution company, has acquired North American rights to the new 4K restoration of Béla Tarr collaborator György Fehér’s landmark but long unseen Hungarian masterpiece “Twilight” (“Szürkület”). The restored version of the film world premiered in the Berlinale’s Classics strand on Monday. Hungary’s National Film Institute handled the sale.
Fehér, who made only two theatrical features, shot the black-and-white film at the end of the 1980s. Based on the crime novella “The Pledge” by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, it is the story of a retired detective who uses a girl as bait to try to catch a serial killer.
The 4K restoration, using the original 35mm camera negative and magnetic sound tapes, was carried out at Hungary’s National Film Institute. The color grading was supervised by the film’s cinematographer, Miklós Gurbán.
The film premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival in...
Fehér, who made only two theatrical features, shot the black-and-white film at the end of the 1980s. Based on the crime novella “The Pledge” by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, it is the story of a retired detective who uses a girl as bait to try to catch a serial killer.
The 4K restoration, using the original 35mm camera negative and magnetic sound tapes, was carried out at Hungary’s National Film Institute. The color grading was supervised by the film’s cinematographer, Miklós Gurbán.
The film premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival in...
- 2/23/2023
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe 2022 poster for Cannes' Directors' Fortnight.Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight has announced the seven programmers and four consultants who will be supporting incoming artistic director Julien Rejl in his selection processes. Amongst the team is ex-Sheffield DocFest director Cintia Gil, Another Gaze founder Daniella Shreir, and Ming-Jung Kuo, former Program Director of the Taipei Film Festival.Dutch documentary festival IDFA has released the lineups for the first few strands of their 2022 edition, including the short and youth documentary competitions, plus a tribute to the late Lithuanian filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravičius.David Cronenberg’s Scanners is being remade as a TV series. Yann Demange (executive producer of Lovecraft Country and Top Boy) will direct, with Cronenberg also on board as an executive producer.Recommended VIEWINGAfter premiering in competition at the Venice International Film Festival, A Couple, Frederick Wiseman’s new fiction feature,...
- 9/27/2022
- MUBI
by Fred Barrett
Released during the early years of what would ultimately be the Japanese New Wave’s final decade, Toshio Matsumoto’s second feature length film “Demons” has unfortunately dwelled in relative obscurity when compared to his most famous work, the 1969 arthouse fantasy-horror docudrama “Funeral Parade of Roses”.
When contrasted with the experimental approach that marked his cinematic debut, Matsumoto’s sophomore effort is a comparatively straightforward tale of bloody, delirious revenge. It tells the story of Gengobe Satsuma, an exiled samurai who yearns to join the legendary 47 ronin in their quest to avenge the death of their master. Just as an opportunity to get back into his former clan’s good graces arises in the form of 100 ryo, Gengobe learns that his lover Koman, a geisha, is about to be sold to another samurai. Gengobe uses the money to pay her ransom but soon discovers that he has...
Released during the early years of what would ultimately be the Japanese New Wave’s final decade, Toshio Matsumoto’s second feature length film “Demons” has unfortunately dwelled in relative obscurity when compared to his most famous work, the 1969 arthouse fantasy-horror docudrama “Funeral Parade of Roses”.
When contrasted with the experimental approach that marked his cinematic debut, Matsumoto’s sophomore effort is a comparatively straightforward tale of bloody, delirious revenge. It tells the story of Gengobe Satsuma, an exiled samurai who yearns to join the legendary 47 ronin in their quest to avenge the death of their master. Just as an opportunity to get back into his former clan’s good graces arises in the form of 100 ryo, Gengobe learns that his lover Koman, a geisha, is about to be sold to another samurai. Gengobe uses the money to pay her ransom but soon discovers that he has...
- 3/12/2022
- by Guest Writer
- AsianMoviePulse
Above: 2021 UK quad poster for 4K restoration of The 400 Blows. Design by The Posterhouse.50,000 Movie Poster of the Day fans can’t be wrong. Yes, just this week my Movie Poster of the Day Instagram—a feed that was a spin-off from this column—surpassed 50,000 followers, which is a little ways off Cristiano Ronaldo’s 411 million and still a tenth of the half a million that Movie Poster of the Day used to have on Tumblr, though I never quite believed those numbers. But I put a lot of faith in my Movie Poster of the Day followers and so every six months I like to collect and rank the most “liked” posters that I have posted in the previous 26 weeks as some sort of bellwether of popular taste.The 400 Blows poster above racked up 3,168 likes earlier this year, making it the third most-liked poster I’ve ever posted (for...
- 3/11/2022
- MUBI
By Elise Shick
The artistic zeitgeist of the Japanese New Wave from the late 1950s through the early 1970s was formed by the proliferation of avant-garde and experimental Japanese films that pursued radical inquests into political, social and cultural changes[1] as one can study via the philosophical and aesthetic presentations, particularly in the works of Nagisa Oshima, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Shuji Terayama and Toshio Matsumoto. The emergence of Japanese ‘I-films’ (personal documentaries) in the early 1970s as the out-turn of the Japanese New Wave marked a historical turning point from public films to the private cinema of personal expressions and individuality[2]. Inspired by Jonas Mekas’s “Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania” (1973), the poet and independent filmmaker Shirouyasu Suzuki’s amateur home movie “Impression of Sunset” (1975) and his later distinctive work “15 Days” (1980) are amongst the personal documentaries that divert from conventional documentary filmmaking and turn the fascination of ‘self’ into...
The artistic zeitgeist of the Japanese New Wave from the late 1950s through the early 1970s was formed by the proliferation of avant-garde and experimental Japanese films that pursued radical inquests into political, social and cultural changes[1] as one can study via the philosophical and aesthetic presentations, particularly in the works of Nagisa Oshima, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Shuji Terayama and Toshio Matsumoto. The emergence of Japanese ‘I-films’ (personal documentaries) in the early 1970s as the out-turn of the Japanese New Wave marked a historical turning point from public films to the private cinema of personal expressions and individuality[2]. Inspired by Jonas Mekas’s “Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania” (1973), the poet and independent filmmaker Shirouyasu Suzuki’s amateur home movie “Impression of Sunset” (1975) and his later distinctive work “15 Days” (1980) are amongst the personal documentaries that divert from conventional documentary filmmaking and turn the fascination of ‘self’ into...
- 11/29/2021
- by Guest Writer
- AsianMoviePulse
The BFI today announces highlights of the UK-wide programme for BFI Japan 2021: 100 Years Of Japanese Cinema, coming to cinemas from October – December 2021. Highlights of the celebration will include a BFI re-release of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954), a BFI Japan Tour, featuring classics from Yasujirō Ozu and Akira Kurosawa, alongside cult titles from Kon Ichikawa and Toshio Matsumoto, which will feature many new 4K restorations and visit cinemas across the UK. For audiences who cannot attend a screening in their local cinema, there is a vast BFI Japan programme online on BFI Player Subscription. The BFI is also working closely with the National Lottery funded BFI Film Audience Network (Fan) to enable cinemas across the UK to host special screenings and events as part of BFI Japan.
Seasons and events will include Day For Night’s Urban, Natural, Human – exploring Japan on screen programme, showing at Home, Manchester, Close-Up...
Seasons and events will include Day For Night’s Urban, Natural, Human – exploring Japan on screen programme, showing at Home, Manchester, Close-Up...
- 10/6/2021
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
Even without the still ongoing pandemic, the organization of a sports event such as the Olympics has to be one of the most taxing assignment for any city. Apart from the accommodation of the athletes and the building of the necessary facilities, there is also the question of logistics, which needs to be addressed as soon as possible. Transportation to the events, the athletes and their equipment has to be ensured, otherwise this could shape how a city and its officials are perceived in the outside world, as well as within the country itself, as the Olympics also offer the opportunity for a country to present itself from the most positive side. During the last Olympics in Tokyo, this aspect was organized by Nippon Express, a giant undertaking which was filmed by directors Shinkichi Noda and Toshio Matsumoto, who would go down in the Japanese film industry as one of...
- 9/20/2021
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival announces full programme for Jaeff 2021: Bodies in advance of ticket sales on 22 July. Jaeff 2021: Bodies will be held at The Barbican from 16-19th September, and online from 20th-30th September.
Jaeff 2021: Bodies explores how we interact with other beings, spaces around us, and how expressions of the unutterable become vital means of communication and connection.
This third edition of the Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival considers the body and sensation, and features work from directors Kon Ichikawa, Toshio Matsumoto, Susumu Hani, Chiaki Nagano, Takahiko Iimura, Tatsumi Kumashiro, Shuji Terayama and more.
In a time where words, facts and logic are increasingly ineffectual, powerless and absurd, this year’s programme attempts to make sense of the nonsensical. Finding that sometimes, the most powerful form of expression is often what we feel, rather than what we can say, write, or even think.
Jaeff 2021: Bodies explores how we interact with other beings, spaces around us, and how expressions of the unutterable become vital means of communication and connection.
This third edition of the Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival considers the body and sensation, and features work from directors Kon Ichikawa, Toshio Matsumoto, Susumu Hani, Chiaki Nagano, Takahiko Iimura, Tatsumi Kumashiro, Shuji Terayama and more.
In a time where words, facts and logic are increasingly ineffectual, powerless and absurd, this year’s programme attempts to make sense of the nonsensical. Finding that sometimes, the most powerful form of expression is often what we feel, rather than what we can say, write, or even think.
- 7/19/2021
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSFollowing the launch of the English-language podcast earlier this month, yesterday we revealed our upcoming original Spanish-language podcast! In the first season of the Mubi Podcast: Encuentros, co-produced by Mubi and La Corriente del Golfo Podcast, leading voices in Latin American film and culture come together to think about their own methods and processes for approaching the craft, talk about personal experiences, and reflect on films and filmmakers that have inspired their work. We begin with Gael García Bernal (Mexico) and Carolina Sanín (Colombia) as the guests of the first episode, entitled The Ritual of the Masks. The first season of Encuentros consists of in-depth conversations among colleagues, an encounter between two people who share their love for cinema. Check out the trailer above and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts here.Andrea Arnold...
- 6/16/2021
- MUBI
The Video Essay is a joint project of Mubi and Filmadrid International Film Festival. Film analysis and criticism found a completely new and innovative path with the arrival of the video essay, a relatively recent form that has already its own masters and is becoming increasingly popular. The limits of this discipline are constantly expanding; new essayists are finding innovative ways to study the history of cinema working with images. With this non-competitive section of the festival both Mubi and Filmadrid will offer the platform and visibility the video essay deserves. The seven selected works will be premiering online from June 7 - 13, 2021 on Mubi's Notebook. The selection was made by the programmers of Mubi and Filmadrid.From The Flicker to Gaspar Noé by Carlos Baixauli A journey into experimental cinema through the films of Gaspar Noé and his dialogue between the use of the flicker technique and the works of directors such as Paul Sharits,...
- 6/8/2021
- MUBI
To mark this year’s Pride, Queer East returns to cinemas across London with a diverse set of films from China, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, and the UK, exploring how culture, law, history, and social norms have shaped the current queer landscape in East and Southeast Asia.
The film screenings begin on Saturday 5 June at the Lexi Cinema with the Taiwanese award-winning blockbuster Gf*Bf (2012), exploring the relationship between sexuality and political activism. The programme also features Toshio Matsumoto’s kaleidoscopic masterpiece Funeral Parade of Roses, Oscar-winning director Ang Lee’s gay romantic comedy The Wedding Banquet, the UK premiere of Memories of My Body, As We Like It, Berlinale Teddy Jury Award-winner A Dog Barking at the Moon, BAFTA nominee Lilting, and documentary The Two Lives of Li Ermao.
The film screenings will be taking place throughout June and July, in the Barbican Centre, Catford Mews, Curzon Goldsmiths, Genesis Cinema and the Lexi Cinema.
The film screenings begin on Saturday 5 June at the Lexi Cinema with the Taiwanese award-winning blockbuster Gf*Bf (2012), exploring the relationship between sexuality and political activism. The programme also features Toshio Matsumoto’s kaleidoscopic masterpiece Funeral Parade of Roses, Oscar-winning director Ang Lee’s gay romantic comedy The Wedding Banquet, the UK premiere of Memories of My Body, As We Like It, Berlinale Teddy Jury Award-winner A Dog Barking at the Moon, BAFTA nominee Lilting, and documentary The Two Lives of Li Ermao.
The film screenings will be taking place throughout June and July, in the Barbican Centre, Catford Mews, Curzon Goldsmiths, Genesis Cinema and the Lexi Cinema.
- 6/3/2021
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
The Criterion Channel has unveiled their lineup for next month and it’s another strong slate, featuring retrospectives of Carole Lombard, John Waters, Robert Downey Sr., Luis García Berlanga, Jane Russell, and Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman. Also in the lineup is new additions to their Queersighted series, notably Todd Haynes’ early film Poison (Safe is also premiering in a separate presentation), William Friedkin’s Cruising, and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorama.
The new restorations of Manoel de Oliveira’s stunning Francisca and Francesco Rosi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli will join the channel, alongside Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor, Bong Joon Ho’s early short film Incoherence, and Luc Dardenne & Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s Rosetta.
See the lineup below and explore more on criterionchannel.com.
#Blackmendream, Shikeith, 2014
12 Angry Men, Sidney Lumet, 1957
About Tap, George T. Nierenberg, 1985
The AIDS Show, Peter Adair and Rob Epstein, 1986
The Assignation, Curtis Harrington, 1953
Aya of Yop City,...
The new restorations of Manoel de Oliveira’s stunning Francisca and Francesco Rosi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli will join the channel, alongside Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor, Bong Joon Ho’s early short film Incoherence, and Luc Dardenne & Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s Rosetta.
See the lineup below and explore more on criterionchannel.com.
#Blackmendream, Shikeith, 2014
12 Angry Men, Sidney Lumet, 1957
About Tap, George T. Nierenberg, 1985
The AIDS Show, Peter Adair and Rob Epstein, 1986
The Assignation, Curtis Harrington, 1953
Aya of Yop City,...
- 5/24/2021
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Makoto Tezuka's The Legend of the Stardust Brothers (1985) is playing exclusively on Mubi starting March 18, 2021 in many countries in the series Rediscovered.It’s ironic that Legend of the Stardust Brothers, a film about the meteoric rise, fall, and disappearance of two pop idols, nearly suffered the same fate as its protagonists. A giddy live-action cartoon full of surprising cameos, the film’s plot is sketched around insanely catchy tunes by eclectic pop musician and TV personality Hauro Chikada mocking industry, government, celebrity and scene drama. The anarchic musical was the first feature from up-and-comer Tezka, nee Makoto Tezuka, who at 22 had already garnered national attention for his creative shorts. Family name recognition probably didn’t hurt, as he was also the son of “God of Manga” Osamu Tezuka (creator of “Astroboy”). The film is a charming time capsule of Japan at the dawn of its booming bubble economy, and...
- 3/24/2021
- MUBI
“I am the wound and the blade,
both the torturer and he who is flayed.”
In an interview about his most important work, “Funeral Parade of Roses,” Japanese director Toshio Matsumoto explains how his greatest inspiration was the cultural and social underground of Japanese society. While the concept of “otherness” certainly played a decisive part in many works of art, underground movements all over the world suddenly had found their time to become more and more influential in the public consciousness. Breaking the last remnants of the chains of conformity from the 1950s, feminists, gays and hippies – to name just a few – played their part in defining a decade marked by social and cultural progress for many.
“Funeral Parade of Roses” is streaming on Mubi
However, in the case for “Funeral Parade of Roses”, Matsumoto mentions his fascination with the Japanese gay community, especially drag queens, as one of the main aspects of the projects.
both the torturer and he who is flayed.”
In an interview about his most important work, “Funeral Parade of Roses,” Japanese director Toshio Matsumoto explains how his greatest inspiration was the cultural and social underground of Japanese society. While the concept of “otherness” certainly played a decisive part in many works of art, underground movements all over the world suddenly had found their time to become more and more influential in the public consciousness. Breaking the last remnants of the chains of conformity from the 1950s, feminists, gays and hippies – to name just a few – played their part in defining a decade marked by social and cultural progress for many.
“Funeral Parade of Roses” is streaming on Mubi
However, in the case for “Funeral Parade of Roses”, Matsumoto mentions his fascination with the Japanese gay community, especially drag queens, as one of the main aspects of the projects.
- 12/15/2020
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
Recently awarded with the “Best Humanity Award” at the Japan Film Festival in Los Angeles, Miyuki Tokoi’s “Zero as you are” follows a transgender individual on a 3000 days lasting journey of self-realization. The former Nhk producer and Galaxy Award nominee sheds light on the very recent topic of LGBTQ in Japan.
“Zero As You Are” is screening on Japannual Film Festival in Vienna
Taking a closer look at Japanese film history, gender issues have been broached more openly than one would expect from such a seemingly conformist society. Toshio Matsumoto’s “Funeral Parade of Roses” (1969), Yoshimitsu Morita’s “Kitchen” (1989), and “Close Knit” (2017) by Naoko Ogigami are only a few prime examples. In the field of documentary though, there is nothing quite comparable to Tokoi’s mammoth project.
Introducing Sky Kobayashi. The 15-year-old junior high school student lives in a state of constant anxiety. Born as a girl, and diagnosed...
“Zero As You Are” is screening on Japannual Film Festival in Vienna
Taking a closer look at Japanese film history, gender issues have been broached more openly than one would expect from such a seemingly conformist society. Toshio Matsumoto’s “Funeral Parade of Roses” (1969), Yoshimitsu Morita’s “Kitchen” (1989), and “Close Knit” (2017) by Naoko Ogigami are only a few prime examples. In the field of documentary though, there is nothing quite comparable to Tokoi’s mammoth project.
Introducing Sky Kobayashi. The 15-year-old junior high school student lives in a state of constant anxiety. Born as a girl, and diagnosed...
- 10/12/2020
- by Alexander Knoth
- AsianMoviePulse
By Omar Rasya Joenoes
The first shot of the film is that of a delicate hand stretched against a grey backdrop. It is then joined by another, slightly larger hand, which feels and leaves it. The hand then lowers itself and lands on the shoulder of a man to reveal that we are watching a lovemaking session between a beautiful woman and a younger man. In contrast, the final shot of the film shows the same woman’s face at the end of a train car as the vehicle enters a tunnel, swallowing her image whole until there is nothing left to see but the dark. Between the hotel room and the train ride, we are made to witness adultery, blackmail, nude modeling, film shooting, and possibly even murder attempt.
The woman, whose story is the focal point of this photoplay, is called Mizuki Miyako (portrayed by the gorgeous Mariko Okada...
The first shot of the film is that of a delicate hand stretched against a grey backdrop. It is then joined by another, slightly larger hand, which feels and leaves it. The hand then lowers itself and lands on the shoulder of a man to reveal that we are watching a lovemaking session between a beautiful woman and a younger man. In contrast, the final shot of the film shows the same woman’s face at the end of a train car as the vehicle enters a tunnel, swallowing her image whole until there is nothing left to see but the dark. Between the hotel room and the train ride, we are made to witness adultery, blackmail, nude modeling, film shooting, and possibly even murder attempt.
The woman, whose story is the focal point of this photoplay, is called Mizuki Miyako (portrayed by the gorgeous Mariko Okada...
- 7/17/2020
- by Guest Writer
- AsianMoviePulse
Fifty years on, Toshio Matsumoto’s monochrome masterpiece still seems like a chilling message from the future
Toshio Matsumoto’s 1969 film is a fusillade of haunted images and traumatised glimpses, splattered across a realist melodrama of the Tokyo underground club scene, played out in a fiercely beautiful monochrome. (It is reissued as part of the BFI’s Japan 2020 season which has now been forced to migrate to streaming until cinemas reopen.)
Eddie, played by the then-unknown performer Pîtâ, is a transgender bar hostess and rising star of a place named the Genet – Matsumoto leaves it up to us to ponder the associations. Eddie is having a passionate affair with the club’s owner, Gonda (played by Kurosawa regular Yoshio Tsuchiya), and has ignited the passionate rage and jealousy of Gonda’s other lover and employee, the transgender hostess, Leda (Osamu Ogasawara). As their love triangle proceeds to its operatic conclusion,...
Toshio Matsumoto’s 1969 film is a fusillade of haunted images and traumatised glimpses, splattered across a realist melodrama of the Tokyo underground club scene, played out in a fiercely beautiful monochrome. (It is reissued as part of the BFI’s Japan 2020 season which has now been forced to migrate to streaming until cinemas reopen.)
Eddie, played by the then-unknown performer Pîtâ, is a transgender bar hostess and rising star of a place named the Genet – Matsumoto leaves it up to us to ponder the associations. Eddie is having a passionate affair with the club’s owner, Gonda (played by Kurosawa regular Yoshio Tsuchiya), and has ignited the passionate rage and jealousy of Gonda’s other lover and employee, the transgender hostess, Leda (Osamu Ogasawara). As their love triangle proceeds to its operatic conclusion,...
- 5/13/2020
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
The British Film Institute (BFI) is launching a major six-month season, Japan 2020, on BFI Player from 11 May, with new collections including Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, independent, cult, anime, 21st century and J-Horror.
This major season will spotlight filmmakers who have inspired admiration and fascination around the world. It will start with Akira Kurosawa, and over the coming months it’ll present films from the Golden Age, a focus on Yasujiro Ozu, new wave rebels, the visionary creations of anime, the netherworlds of J-horror, and so much more from archive rarities to contemporary works and cult classics.
New online collections will be released each month, and is expected to be presented at BFI Southbank and cinemas nationwide later this year.
BFI Japan will include:
A major season on BFI Player, divided into thematic collections and released between May and October: Akira Kurosawa (11 May), Classics (11 May), Yasujiro Ozu (5 June), Cult (3 July), Anime...
This major season will spotlight filmmakers who have inspired admiration and fascination around the world. It will start with Akira Kurosawa, and over the coming months it’ll present films from the Golden Age, a focus on Yasujiro Ozu, new wave rebels, the visionary creations of anime, the netherworlds of J-horror, and so much more from archive rarities to contemporary works and cult classics.
New online collections will be released each month, and is expected to be presented at BFI Southbank and cinemas nationwide later this year.
BFI Japan will include:
A major season on BFI Player, divided into thematic collections and released between May and October: Akira Kurosawa (11 May), Classics (11 May), Yasujiro Ozu (5 June), Cult (3 July), Anime...
- 5/11/2020
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
This kaleidoscopic masterpiece, one of the most subversive, intoxicating films of the 60s and a classic of queer cinema, is a headlong dive into a dazzling unseen Tokyo night-world of drag queen bars and fabulous divas.
“Funeral Parade of Roses” will be released on Blu-ray – the first time it has been available on Blu-ray in the UK – on 18 May 2020, and will simultaneously be available for rental and download-to-own on iTunes and Amazon Prime. It will be available on BFI Player’s subscription service later this summer as part of a major new collection of Japanese films, BFI Japan 2020, which launches on 11 May and continues until October. This 2-disc Blu-ray is a strictly Limited Edition of 3000 copies.
Toshio Matsumoto, one of Japan’s leading experimental filmmakers, bends and distorts time, and freely mixes documentary interviews, Brechtian film-within-a-film asides, Oedipal premonitions of disaster, his own avant-garde shorts (eight of...
“Funeral Parade of Roses” will be released on Blu-ray – the first time it has been available on Blu-ray in the UK – on 18 May 2020, and will simultaneously be available for rental and download-to-own on iTunes and Amazon Prime. It will be available on BFI Player’s subscription service later this summer as part of a major new collection of Japanese films, BFI Japan 2020, which launches on 11 May and continues until October. This 2-disc Blu-ray is a strictly Limited Edition of 3000 copies.
Toshio Matsumoto, one of Japan’s leading experimental filmmakers, bends and distorts time, and freely mixes documentary interviews, Brechtian film-within-a-film asides, Oedipal premonitions of disaster, his own avant-garde shorts (eight of...
- 5/10/2020
- by Don Anelli
- AsianMoviePulse
The full programme for the first Queer East Film Festival is announced. The curated series of screenings across London, with accompanying panel events, will explore identity, religion, family, adulthood and politics through queer relationships on screen, specifically from East and Southeast Asia.
Many have seen the significant progress of Lgbtq + rights across the world, but progress in Asia has been mixed. The festival invites everyone in the UK to be part of the discussion and celebrate diverse identities, cultures, and heritages of Asian and Asian diasporic communities who’ve often been excluded from mainstream discourse.
The programme is a mix of classic films and new releases, exploring how culture, law, history, and social norms have affected and built the current Asian queer landscape over 50 years of cinema.
Twenty-nine films, including 6 UK Premieres and 2 London Premieres, from 13 countries across Asia will be screened in cinemas across the capital to foster and...
Many have seen the significant progress of Lgbtq + rights across the world, but progress in Asia has been mixed. The festival invites everyone in the UK to be part of the discussion and celebrate diverse identities, cultures, and heritages of Asian and Asian diasporic communities who’ve often been excluded from mainstream discourse.
The programme is a mix of classic films and new releases, exploring how culture, law, history, and social norms have affected and built the current Asian queer landscape over 50 years of cinema.
Twenty-nine films, including 6 UK Premieres and 2 London Premieres, from 13 countries across Asia will be screened in cinemas across the capital to foster and...
- 3/15/2020
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSLolita (1962)This year's Golden Globes winners have been announced and can be found here.Looking ahead, take note of Criterion's roster of upcoming films to look forward to in 2020, from Steven Spielberg's West Side Story to Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir Part II. Sue Lyon, who starred in films like Stanley Kubrick's Lolita and The Night of the Iguana by John Huston, has died. The Studio Ghibli official New Year's message includes the announcement that Hayao Miyazaki's How Do You Live? is about 15% complete, as Miyazaki is completing about one minute of animation per month. Nevertheless, we look forward to the auteur's latest opus. Recommended VIEWINGThe first trailer for Downhill, an adaptation of Ruben Östlund's Force Majeure starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell as a couple whose relationship is threatened by a fateful avalanche.
- 1/9/2020
- MUBI
Akio Jissoji’s first film produced by the Art Theatre Guild (Atg), “This Transient Life” was also one of the most successful, receiving a wider release outside the Atg circuit and winning the Grand Prix at the Locarno film festival in 1970, thus gaining international acknowledgement for both the director and his movie, and the Guild.
The film revolves around siblings Masao and Yuri who live in a huge estate near Lake Biwa, north of Kyoto. Despite being born in a rather traditional family, both siblings are rather rebellious for the particular times, with Yuri rejecting all proposals from her parents to marry her off, and Masao to attend the university or follow in the footsteps of his merchant father, instead obsessing with books and Buddhist sculptures. Masao in particular fights frequently with his father regarding his life decisions, with the latter threatening to disown him a number of times.
The film revolves around siblings Masao and Yuri who live in a huge estate near Lake Biwa, north of Kyoto. Despite being born in a rather traditional family, both siblings are rather rebellious for the particular times, with Yuri rejecting all proposals from her parents to marry her off, and Masao to attend the university or follow in the footsteps of his merchant father, instead obsessing with books and Buddhist sculptures. Masao in particular fights frequently with his father regarding his life decisions, with the latter threatening to disown him a number of times.
- 8/21/2019
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
An important event of the 19th New Horizons festival will be Poland’s first retrospective of works by Terayama Shūji (1935-1983), one of the most prominent avant-garde reformers of Japanese cinema and theater.
Selected filmography:
Short films
1964 Ori / Kanshū (The Cage / Klatka / Więzień w klatce)
1971 Tomato Kecchappu Kōtei (Emperor Tomato Ketchup / Cesarz Tomato Ketchiup)
1974 Chōfuku-ki (Butterfly Dress Pledge / Motyl)
1974 Seishōnen no tame no eiga nyūmon (The young people’s guide to film / Wstęp dla młodzieży do wiedzy o filmie)
1974 Rōra (Laura / Laura)
1975 Shinpan (The Trial / Proces)
1975 Hōsō-tan (A Tale of Smallpox / Opowieść o ospie)
1977 Marudororu no uta (Les Chants de Maldoror / Pieśni Maldorora)
1979 Kusa meikyū (Grass Labyrinth / Labirynt Traw)
Features films
1971 Sho o suteyo machi e deyō (Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets / Rzućmy książki, wyjdźmy na ulice!)
1974 Den’en ni shisu (Pastoral: To Die in the Country <aka Pastoral Hide and Seek> / Wiejska ciuciubabka)
1977 Bokusā (Boxer / Bokser)
1981 Shanhai Ijin Shōkan (Fruits of Passion...
Selected filmography:
Short films
1964 Ori / Kanshū (The Cage / Klatka / Więzień w klatce)
1971 Tomato Kecchappu Kōtei (Emperor Tomato Ketchup / Cesarz Tomato Ketchiup)
1974 Chōfuku-ki (Butterfly Dress Pledge / Motyl)
1974 Seishōnen no tame no eiga nyūmon (The young people’s guide to film / Wstęp dla młodzieży do wiedzy o filmie)
1974 Rōra (Laura / Laura)
1975 Shinpan (The Trial / Proces)
1975 Hōsō-tan (A Tale of Smallpox / Opowieść o ospie)
1977 Marudororu no uta (Les Chants de Maldoror / Pieśni Maldorora)
1979 Kusa meikyū (Grass Labyrinth / Labirynt Traw)
Features films
1971 Sho o suteyo machi e deyō (Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets / Rzućmy książki, wyjdźmy na ulice!)
1974 Den’en ni shisu (Pastoral: To Die in the Country <aka Pastoral Hide and Seek> / Wiejska ciuciubabka)
1977 Bokusā (Boxer / Bokser)
1981 Shanhai Ijin Shōkan (Fruits of Passion...
- 7/20/2019
- by Rhythm Zaveri
- AsianMoviePulse
Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.
Museum of the Moving Image
“See It Big! Action,” one of the finest genre retrospectives in recent memory, is underway with screenings such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Seven Samurai.
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit plays throughout the weekend as part of an Earth Day celebration.
Once undistributed for fear it would “incite racial tension,...
Museum of the Moving Image
“See It Big! Action,” one of the finest genre retrospectives in recent memory, is underway with screenings such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Seven Samurai.
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit plays throughout the weekend as part of an Earth Day celebration.
Once undistributed for fear it would “incite racial tension,...
- 4/19/2019
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
“Anpo Joyaku” is one of the earlier films by Japanese experimental film director Toshio Matsumoto, whose most well-know film is probably the recently restored “Funeral Parade of Roses” (1969). The title refers to the first security treaty signed between the Us and Japan.
Well versed in Western and Japanese modernist aesthetics and artworks, Matsumoto was also deeply invested in the social movements of the time. More importantly, he was not only interested in using film to engage with social issues, since film, especially the post-war Japanese cinema, was also the problem itself. In an interview with film scholar Aaron Gerow, Matsumoto criticized the old masters of classical Japanese cinema for not being able to reflect upon, or investigate one’s own responsibility of Japan’s World War II effort. Matsumoto argued that this lack of thinking informed the aesthetics of the Japanese mainstream filmmaking after the war. Since these filmmakers were...
Well versed in Western and Japanese modernist aesthetics and artworks, Matsumoto was also deeply invested in the social movements of the time. More importantly, he was not only interested in using film to engage with social issues, since film, especially the post-war Japanese cinema, was also the problem itself. In an interview with film scholar Aaron Gerow, Matsumoto criticized the old masters of classical Japanese cinema for not being able to reflect upon, or investigate one’s own responsibility of Japan’s World War II effort. Matsumoto argued that this lack of thinking informed the aesthetics of the Japanese mainstream filmmaking after the war. Since these filmmakers were...
- 4/5/2019
- by I-Lin Liu
- AsianMoviePulse
Film series sheds new light on dynamic movement in Japanese cinema with a selection of overlooked titles, including newly subtitled 35mm prints
New York, NY (February 27, 2019) – With its inception in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Japanese New Wave ushered in a postwar generation of politically engaged and artistically adventurous filmmakers that radically transformed the country’s cinema in theory and practice. Looking beyond internationally lauded figures such as Nagisa Oshima and Masahiro Shinoda, The Other Japanese New Wave: Radical Films from 1958-61 aims to reexamine this dynamic moment in Japanese film history with the introduction of work by lesser-known studio directors, auteurs, documentarists and student filmmakers, including newly subtitled rarities imported from Japan never-before-seen in the U.S.
The series launches on April 5 with Kiju Yoshida’s debut feature Good-for-Nothing, introduced by series curator Go Hirasawa. A key figure in the birth of the New Wave at Shochiku,...
New York, NY (February 27, 2019) – With its inception in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Japanese New Wave ushered in a postwar generation of politically engaged and artistically adventurous filmmakers that radically transformed the country’s cinema in theory and practice. Looking beyond internationally lauded figures such as Nagisa Oshima and Masahiro Shinoda, The Other Japanese New Wave: Radical Films from 1958-61 aims to reexamine this dynamic moment in Japanese film history with the introduction of work by lesser-known studio directors, auteurs, documentarists and student filmmakers, including newly subtitled rarities imported from Japan never-before-seen in the U.S.
The series launches on April 5 with Kiju Yoshida’s debut feature Good-for-Nothing, introduced by series curator Go Hirasawa. A key figure in the birth of the New Wave at Shochiku,...
- 3/1/2019
- by Ina Karpinska
- AsianMoviePulse
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Newsa remarkable artistic unison is upon us: Argentine auteur Lucrecia Martel (Zama) and musician Björk are set to team on a theatrical concert production, to be directed by Martel. Recommended VIEWINGThe International Film Festival Rotterdam has concluded, meanwhile they’ve thankfully shared a host of essential masterclasses, all of which are viewable from the festival's YouTube channel: Nicole Brenez, Claire Denis, Roberto Minervini, Carlos Reygadas, and Jia Zhangke.Almodóvar reunites with his beloved muses Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas—here’s the lovely, colorful trailer for Pain & Glory (sans English subtitles).AlWe somehow missed this last week: Jia Zhangke teamed up with Apple on this cheerful short film-advertisement for their new iPhone Xs.modovar reunites with his beloved muses Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas—here’s the lovely, colourful trailer for Pain & Glory.
- 2/21/2019
- MUBI
“I am the wound and the blade,
both the torturer and he who is flayed.”
In an interview about his most important work, “Funeral Parade of Roses,” Japanese director Toshio Matsumoto explains how his greatest inspiration was the cultural and social underground of Japanese society. While the concept of “otherness” certainly played a decisive part in many works of art, underground movements all over the world suddenly had found their time to become more and more influential in the public consciousness. Breaking the last remnants of the chains of conformity from the 1950s, feminists, gays and hippies – to name just a few – played their part in defining a decade marked by social and cultural progress for many.
However, in the case for “Funeral Parade of Roses”, Matsumoto mentions his fascination with the Japanese gay community, especially drag queens, as one of the main aspects of the projects. Especially in a country as authoritarian as Japan,...
both the torturer and he who is flayed.”
In an interview about his most important work, “Funeral Parade of Roses,” Japanese director Toshio Matsumoto explains how his greatest inspiration was the cultural and social underground of Japanese society. While the concept of “otherness” certainly played a decisive part in many works of art, underground movements all over the world suddenly had found their time to become more and more influential in the public consciousness. Breaking the last remnants of the chains of conformity from the 1950s, feminists, gays and hippies – to name just a few – played their part in defining a decade marked by social and cultural progress for many.
However, in the case for “Funeral Parade of Roses”, Matsumoto mentions his fascination with the Japanese gay community, especially drag queens, as one of the main aspects of the projects. Especially in a country as authoritarian as Japan,...
- 9/24/2018
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
Here we go again. Festival time. Why do we put ourselves through this? All so we can make semi-coherent pronouncements on The Year in Film? So that when the Oscar bloggers come crawling out of their holes each September, hoping to see their gold-plated shadows, we can say that we were somewhere else, appreciating the true art of the medium? Why not? Someone has to hold fast against the all-consuming law of the market. Wavelengths is as good a place as any to make a stand in favor of the contrarianism of beauty and rage.But how do you define a year in cinema? Each year, film festivals, both major and minor, go through hundreds upon hundreds of selections and submissions, taking into account all sorts of criteria: relative importance of the films in question; the local taste of the audience; due diligence to certain studios, donors, and sales agents...
- 9/8/2018
- MUBI
Unlike most filmmakers who retire, Béla Tarr has actually stuck to this word. 2011’s “The Turin Horse” was indeed the Hungarian luminary’s final work, and a fitting swan song for a decades-long career that spawned several masterworks. At the top of that list is “Sátántangó,” Tarr’s 432-minute opus, which remains difficult to see 24 years after it was first released and has never been released on Blu-ray.
Until now, that is: Arbelos Films is working on a 4K restoration of the film, which will be re-released in theaters early next year with a Blu-ray/VOD release to follow. A boutique film distributor and digital restoration company, the Los Angeles–based Arbelos is also working on a 4K update of Dennis Hopper’s “The Last Movie.”
Read More:Bela Tarr Speaks: The Retired Hungarian Director Explains Why He Shut Down His Film School Project
Set in a remote Hungarian village whose...
Until now, that is: Arbelos Films is working on a 4K restoration of the film, which will be re-released in theaters early next year with a Blu-ray/VOD release to follow. A boutique film distributor and digital restoration company, the Los Angeles–based Arbelos is also working on a 4K update of Dennis Hopper’s “The Last Movie.”
Read More:Bela Tarr Speaks: The Retired Hungarian Director Explains Why He Shut Down His Film School Project
Set in a remote Hungarian village whose...
- 1/18/2018
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
Long unavailable in the U.S., Toshio Matsumoto’s subversive masterpiece “Funeral Parade of Roses” is now in limited release with a shiny new 4k restoration from Cinelicious Pics and The Cinefamily, crafted from the original 35mm camera negative and sound elements of the feature.
The film follows transgender actor Peter, who turns in an eye-opening performance as hot young thing Eddie, hostess at Bar Gene who enters into a violent love-triangle with reigning drag queen Leda (Osamu Ogasawara) and Gonda (played by Kurosawa regular Yoshio Tsuchiya).
Read More: ‘Funeral Parade of Roses’ Review: 50 Years Later, This Transgressive Japanese Drama Is Still a Party and a Procession
As our Michael Nordine wrote in his review, the movie as “both a party and a procession,” adding that the “subversive drama starts like a dream, a black-and-white vision of bodies entwined in momentary escape, before reality intervenes: Eddie (Peter, also known as...
The film follows transgender actor Peter, who turns in an eye-opening performance as hot young thing Eddie, hostess at Bar Gene who enters into a violent love-triangle with reigning drag queen Leda (Osamu Ogasawara) and Gonda (played by Kurosawa regular Yoshio Tsuchiya).
Read More: ‘Funeral Parade of Roses’ Review: 50 Years Later, This Transgressive Japanese Drama Is Still a Party and a Procession
As our Michael Nordine wrote in his review, the movie as “both a party and a procession,” adding that the “subversive drama starts like a dream, a black-and-white vision of bodies entwined in momentary escape, before reality intervenes: Eddie (Peter, also known as...
- 6/14/2017
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
What do “The Aviator,” “Inglourious Basterds” and “The Matrix” all have in common? Jaw-dropping reflection shots.
Read More: 16mm Film’s Brilliance is Praised in Entertaining New Video Essay — Watch
The Auteur Journal has made a beautiful new supercut (via Film School Rejects) that brings together 37 of the best mirror shots in cinema. Filmmakers behind the camera for these images include Martin Scorsese, Danny Boyle, Quentin Tarantino, Jean-Luc Godard, Christian Petzold, the Wachowskis, Christopher Nolan, the Dardenne brothers and more.
A mirror shot is never just a mirror shot, and each image speaks volumes to the respective movie’s themes. The shot from “Phoenix,” embedded below, splits Nina Hoss’ reflection between two shards of glass, an image that speaks directly to her character’s double identity. Scorsese uses the reflection of an airplane to distort the features of Leonardo Dicaprio’s Howard Hughs, a fun house mirror effect that speaks...
Read More: 16mm Film’s Brilliance is Praised in Entertaining New Video Essay — Watch
The Auteur Journal has made a beautiful new supercut (via Film School Rejects) that brings together 37 of the best mirror shots in cinema. Filmmakers behind the camera for these images include Martin Scorsese, Danny Boyle, Quentin Tarantino, Jean-Luc Godard, Christian Petzold, the Wachowskis, Christopher Nolan, the Dardenne brothers and more.
A mirror shot is never just a mirror shot, and each image speaks volumes to the respective movie’s themes. The shot from “Phoenix,” embedded below, splits Nina Hoss’ reflection between two shards of glass, an image that speaks directly to her character’s double identity. Scorsese uses the reflection of an airplane to distort the features of Leonardo Dicaprio’s Howard Hughs, a fun house mirror effect that speaks...
- 6/14/2017
- by Zack Sharf
- Indiewire
‘Jungle’ Trailer: Daniel Radcliffe Gets Sent to Wilderness Hell By ‘Wolf Creek’ Director Greg McLean
Greg McLean loves putting his characters through hell. In efforts like “Wolf Creek,” “Rogue” and “The Belko Experiment,” McLean makes the viewer cringe as his characters are put in impossible situations and forced to survive or die. This mentality is applying whole-heartedly to his next movie, “Jungle,” starring Daniel Radcliffe. The movie is opening the Melbourne International Film Festival on August 3, and a new trailer has debuted.
Read More: Daniel Radcliffe: It’s ‘Pretty Undeniable’ That Hollywood is Racist
“Jungle” is set in the early 1980s and follows a group of young men who venture from the Bolivian city of La Paz into the uncharted Amazon. Let’s just say the jungle isn’t as friendly as these men are hoping for, and it’s only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose. Thomas Kretschmann, Alex Russell, Joel Jackson and Yasmin Kassim co-star.
“Jungle” currently does not have a U.
Read More: Daniel Radcliffe: It’s ‘Pretty Undeniable’ That Hollywood is Racist
“Jungle” is set in the early 1980s and follows a group of young men who venture from the Bolivian city of La Paz into the uncharted Amazon. Let’s just say the jungle isn’t as friendly as these men are hoping for, and it’s only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose. Thomas Kretschmann, Alex Russell, Joel Jackson and Yasmin Kassim co-star.
“Jungle” currently does not have a U.
- 6/14/2017
- by Zack Sharf
- Indiewire
Before Divine, Laverne Cox and the leading ladies of “Tangerine” there was Peter, who in 1969 helped make “Funeral Parade of Roses” both a party and a procession. Toshio Matsumoto’s subversive drama starts like a dream, a black-and-white vision of bodies entwined in momentary escape, before reality intervenes: Eddie (Peter, also known as Pita) and Gonda’s (Yoshio Tsuchiya) love affair is an illicit one, and at risk of being undone by the fact that Gonda is already spoken for. That’s the central conflict in “Funeral Parade of Roses,” but describing this transgressive take on “Oedipus Rex” purely in terms of plot would be as limiting as calling the King of Thebes slightly confused.
The title is a double entendre of sorts: “Rose” carries the same connotation in Japanese that “pansy” does in English, with Eddie getting pride of place as the brightest flower in Matsumoto’s bouquet. Some of the others are wilting,...
The title is a double entendre of sorts: “Rose” carries the same connotation in Japanese that “pansy” does in English, with Eddie getting pride of place as the brightest flower in Matsumoto’s bouquet. Some of the others are wilting,...
- 6/9/2017
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
A window into a freewheeling, late-'60s Tokyo even many Japanophiles will be unfamiliar with, Funeral Parade of Roses centers on a gay subculture thriving in bars staffed by men in drag. Spicing its fictional narrative up with snippets of documentary interviews, experimental interludes, and fractured chronology, it was released in 1969 by Toshio Matsumoto, a theorist and experimental film/video artist especially interested in boundary-testing documentary films. Practically unseen here, it has been restored by Cinelicious, the same folks who recently brought the oversexed psychedelic cartoon Belladonna of Sadness to these shores, and it should appeal to many of the same...
- 6/9/2017
- by John DeFore
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Cinelicious Pics and actor Elijah Wood’s production company SpectreVision will restore and re-release Toshio Matsumoto’s Japanese queer cinema classic “Funeral Parade of Roses.” A loose adaptation of “Oedipus Rex” set in the gay underground of 1960’s Tokyo, the film follows a group of transgender people as they travel through a largely unseen world of drag bars and nightclubs, fueled by booze, drugs, fuzz guitar, performance art and black mascara.
Long unavailable in the United States, “Funeral Parade of Roses” is an intoxicating masterpiece of subversive imagery, combining elements of documentary and the avant garde. Stanley Kubrick acknowledged that the film was a major influence on “A Clockwork Orange.” Check out some exclusive images from the film below.
Read More: ‘Private Property’ Exclusive Trailer & Poster: Lost 1960s Noir Melodrama Starring Warren Oates
Cinelicious specializes in releasing independent features and docs along with brand-new 4K restorations of under-seen classics. They...
Long unavailable in the United States, “Funeral Parade of Roses” is an intoxicating masterpiece of subversive imagery, combining elements of documentary and the avant garde. Stanley Kubrick acknowledged that the film was a major influence on “A Clockwork Orange.” Check out some exclusive images from the film below.
Read More: ‘Private Property’ Exclusive Trailer & Poster: Lost 1960s Noir Melodrama Starring Warren Oates
Cinelicious specializes in releasing independent features and docs along with brand-new 4K restorations of under-seen classics. They...
- 6/30/2016
- by Vikram Murthi
- Indiewire
“Todd Haynes‘ filmography is often overwhelming in its intellectual acumen and emotional devastation,” we noted upon the release of his latest film this past fall. “This is true of Carol, which is at once a return to the deconstruction of femininity, social mores, and mild anarchy of privilege, as well as an honest and heartbreaking story about falling in love and the trepidation therein.” Over 100 film experts, ranging from critics to writers to programmers, agree on the emotional power of the drama, as they’ve voted it the best Lgbt film of all-time.
Conducted by BFI ahead of the 30th BFI Flare: London Lgbt Film Festival, they note this is the “first major critical survey of Lgbt films.” Speaking about leading the poll, Haynes said, “I’m so proud to have Carol voted as the top Lgbt film of all time in this poll launched for the Fest’s 30th edition.
Conducted by BFI ahead of the 30th BFI Flare: London Lgbt Film Festival, they note this is the “first major critical survey of Lgbt films.” Speaking about leading the poll, Haynes said, “I’m so proud to have Carol voted as the top Lgbt film of all time in this poll launched for the Fest’s 30th edition.
- 3/15/2016
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Above: Poster signed “coo” for Nikudan [The Human Bullet] (Kihachi Okamoto, Japan, 1968).
For the past two months, and concluding this weekend, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has been screening the films of Japan’s Art Theater Guild. Programmed in conjunction with the gallery exhibition Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde, the series Art Theater Guild and Japanese Underground Cinema 1960-1986 was “the most comprehensive U.S. retrospective ever devoted to...the independent film company that radically transformed Japanese cinema by producing and distributing experimental, transgressive, and genre-shattering films from the early 1960s until the mid-1980s.”
Posters for the Atg were harder to find than I expected, at least in good high-quality scans, so I have concentrated on a handful of masterful designs from the late 60s, all of which use a combination of photo montage and illustration (a couple of which I have featured in this column before.)
According...
For the past two months, and concluding this weekend, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has been screening the films of Japan’s Art Theater Guild. Programmed in conjunction with the gallery exhibition Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde, the series Art Theater Guild and Japanese Underground Cinema 1960-1986 was “the most comprehensive U.S. retrospective ever devoted to...the independent film company that radically transformed Japanese cinema by producing and distributing experimental, transgressive, and genre-shattering films from the early 1960s until the mid-1980s.”
Posters for the Atg were harder to find than I expected, at least in good high-quality scans, so I have concentrated on a handful of masterful designs from the late 60s, all of which use a combination of photo montage and illustration (a couple of which I have featured in this column before.)
According...
- 2/8/2013
- by Adrian Curry
- MUBI
Photo courtesy of Abby Rose Photography.
This year marked the 50th anniversary of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, which would be a milestone for any cinema-related event in the U.S. But for a festival that has carved out a niche in the area of experimental and avant-garde film and video, Aaff's achievement is especially noteworthy. Even within the rarefied realm of cinephilia, the avant-garde tends to be something on the margins, or even in the best of circumstances (e.g., the Rotterdam, New York, or Toronto film festivals) one part of a much larger whole. So the fact that Ann Arbor and its intrepid citizens have continued to support this strange little festival, and all the bizarre films the festival has thrown their way over the years, speaks very highly of both the town and the festival founders and organizers (many of whom were present for an on-stage birthday ceremony,...
This year marked the 50th anniversary of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, which would be a milestone for any cinema-related event in the U.S. But for a festival that has carved out a niche in the area of experimental and avant-garde film and video, Aaff's achievement is especially noteworthy. Even within the rarefied realm of cinephilia, the avant-garde tends to be something on the margins, or even in the best of circumstances (e.g., the Rotterdam, New York, or Toronto film festivals) one part of a much larger whole. So the fact that Ann Arbor and its intrepid citizens have continued to support this strange little festival, and all the bizarre films the festival has thrown their way over the years, speaks very highly of both the town and the festival founders and organizers (many of whom were present for an on-stage birthday ceremony,...
- 5/7/2012
- MUBI
It’s the 50th anniversary of the Ann Arbor Film Festival and they’re preparing an all-out blowout on March 27 to April 1 to celebrate! The fest is crammed to the gills with the latest and greatest in experimental and avant-garde film, in addition to a celebration of classic work from Ann Arbors past.
Filmmaker Bruce Baillie was there at the first Aaff — and numerous times since. He’s back this year with a major retrospective of his entire career that spans three separate programs. Baillie, who’ll be in attendance of course, will present a brand-new restored version of his epic pseudo-Western Quick Billy, plus screenings of his classic short movies such as Castro Street, Yellow Horse, Quixote, To Parsifal and more.
There’s also a program dedicated to the films of the late Robert Nelson, including Bleu Shut and Special Warning, as well as sprinklings of underground classics throughout...
Filmmaker Bruce Baillie was there at the first Aaff — and numerous times since. He’s back this year with a major retrospective of his entire career that spans three separate programs. Baillie, who’ll be in attendance of course, will present a brand-new restored version of his epic pseudo-Western Quick Billy, plus screenings of his classic short movies such as Castro Street, Yellow Horse, Quixote, To Parsifal and more.
There’s also a program dedicated to the films of the late Robert Nelson, including Bleu Shut and Special Warning, as well as sprinklings of underground classics throughout...
- 3/7/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
When thinking of a film to return to this series of articles, I racked my brain constantly. So many films came to mind, favorites of mine that I would geek out like crazy if Criterion put out in a supplements laden edition. But the harder I thought about it, I wanted to find a favorite film of mine that pushes the audience. Not only now when people watch it but back when it was first crafted and came out in theaters. My brain went ‘duh’ and I had my pick right from the get go. That film is Toshio Matsumoto’s Funeral Parade of Roses (Bara no sôretsu) from 1969.
A film that delves into sexual identity, which I think is more relevant now than ever. A forgotten film, sadly, that gets passed over when people talk about the avant garde films that influenced them. Why has this film been passed...
A film that delves into sexual identity, which I think is more relevant now than ever. A forgotten film, sadly, that gets passed over when people talk about the avant garde films that influenced them. Why has this film been passed...
- 6/28/2011
- by James McCormick
- CriterionCast
I recently came across a page on the website of the Cinématheque Française devoted to their eye-popping collection of Japanese posters, many of which I had never seen before. Though there are some striking examples of the highly dramatic painterly style of the 1950s (like this Throne of Blood), what really caught my eye were the collage designs of the ’60s perfected by the great Tadanori Yokoo and Kiyoshi Awazu (both subjects for a future column).
I thought I had a pretty good grasp on Nagisa Oshima but I had never even heard of Band of Ninja (1967) until I saw this rule-busting poster (designer unknown). I never would have thought that putting a photo of the director in the middle of a poster was a good idea until I saw this, but somehow it works amid the myriad illustrated, photographic and typographic elements.
Band of Ninja, it turns out, is a most unusual film itself.
I thought I had a pretty good grasp on Nagisa Oshima but I had never even heard of Band of Ninja (1967) until I saw this rule-busting poster (designer unknown). I never would have thought that putting a photo of the director in the middle of a poster was a good idea until I saw this, but somehow it works amid the myriad illustrated, photographic and typographic elements.
Band of Ninja, it turns out, is a most unusual film itself.
- 4/23/2010
- MUBI
Everything you've ever wanted to know about Tokyo trans vestites but were afraid to ask is found in "Funeral Parade of Roses" (1969).
And don't be surprised if you have trouble telling the girls from the boys who want to be girls.
The film, written and directed by Toshio Matsumoto, is part of a Japan Society series honoring the Art Theatre Guild, which brought art-house movies to Japan.
"Funeral Parade of Roses," unreeling Friday at 7:30 p.m., unfolds in stylish black and white.
The sex scenes are a real turn-on, the nighttime shots of Tokyo are fun, there's some...
And don't be surprised if you have trouble telling the girls from the boys who want to be girls.
The film, written and directed by Toshio Matsumoto, is part of a Japan Society series honoring the Art Theatre Guild, which brought art-house movies to Japan.
"Funeral Parade of Roses," unreeling Friday at 7:30 p.m., unfolds in stylish black and white.
The sex scenes are a real turn-on, the nighttime shots of Tokyo are fun, there's some...
- 2/15/2009
- by By V.A. MUSETTO
- NYPost.com
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