Independent U.S. distributors Cinelicious Pics have announced that they will restore Japanese director Toshio Matsumoto's classic film
Funeral Parade of Roses (1969), starring Pîtâ, Osamu Ogasawara, and Yoshimi Jô.
The new restoration will have its North American premiere in early 2017. A Blu-ray release is also planned.
Long unavailable in the U.S., this 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 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 classic
A Clockwork Orange.