Queer/Art/Film: Zihan Loo presents FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES

This is the one film we at Queer/Art/Film have been waiting for with most excitement all summer, FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES! Rarely screened anywhere, and not easily available on DVD, this film of dueling drag queens in 1960's Tokyo is subversive queer cinema at its best, and most inspiring! The evening likely to sell out, so buy your tix in advance at: http://www.movietickets.com/pre_purchase.asp?house_id=9598&movie_id=75344&rdate=08/23/2010 Made in 1969 when homosexuality was still very much taboo in Japan, Toshio Mastumotos extraordinary Funeral Parade of Roses must have been a shock to the senses of even the most open-minded avant-garde filmgoer. The film begins as the tale of two rival drag queens at a hip drag club but eventually becomes a transgressive Warhol-meets-grindhouse twist on the Oedipus story, intercut with Bergman-esque interviews with the actors in the film answering questions about homosexuality and drag. It was reportedly one of Stanley Kubricks favorite films and a noticeable influence on A Clockwork Orange. It was also a big influence on our guest presenter, Singaporean filmmaker Loo Zihan, whose wonderful debut film SOLOS, featured a frank portrayal of a students illicit affair with his much older male teacher, and shocked his conservative, homophobic country, who immediately banned the film. This is a must-see. Watch the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDLfajb-ljs ZIHAN LOO on FUNERAL PARADE: Funeral Parade is in many ways a seminal film; personally, there are so few Asian films that depict the homosexual experience, discovering Funeral Parade was a revelation, to see how gay life was portrayed in an uninhibited manner. It is often easy to overlook Asias parallel film history in the 1960s, with Japan being at the forefront of this movement. Funeral Parade has the privilege of falling into two concurrent and important film movements at the same time. The first movement being that of Japanese Avant Garde films, which includes not only Toshio Mastumoto but also Hiroshi Teshigahara - another filmmaker I have deep respect and admiration for. At the same time, Funeral Parade has often been attributed to the first wave of Pinku Eiga (Sexploitation) films, and is noted to be the pioneer of gay-themed pink films. My affinity for Funeral Parade stems from the fact that Mastumoto is not only an experimental filmmaker I respect but most importantly that we both were making films in an Asian environment, featuring gay people in a society and at a time where homosexuality is a taboo. That was then Japan in 1969, and here we are in Singapore today, it is amazing for me to compare both countries situation, and how little or how much has changed. Funeral Parade was an important threshold in Mastumoto oeuvre as it remains one of his most accessible films, and yet retains much of the radical editing explorations with which he will push to even extreme limits in his subsequent films. When Adam and Ira approached me to select a film for the showcase, Funeral Parade seems like the only and most pertinent choice, a film that is rich enough the deserve multiple viewings, at the same time a time capsule, capturing the vibrancy of the gay counterculture of Tokyo in the 1960s. Viewing it evokes a ridiculous sense of nostalgia for something that never really existed in my country the first place, where homosexual sodomy is still illegal, and the hopes that someday it might. ON ZIHAN LOO: Born in 1983, Zihan Loo is a Singaporean director and performer. He wrote, co-directed, co-edited and starred in his semi-autobiographical feature film Solos in 2007. The film was pulled from its debut screening in the 20th Singapore International Film Festival due to its explicit depiction of homosexual sex. Solos eventually premiered at the 12th Pusan International Film Festival and was subsequently selected for competition at various film festivals, including AFI Fest and 10th Deauville Asian Film Festival. Most notably, Solos was awarded the Nuovo Sguardi prize in the 23rd Turino Gay and Lesbian Festival. As a performer, Zihan has acted in several films this includes the lead in Pleasure Factory, which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Zihan is presently based in Chicago and is pursuing his MFA at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago.