++ We're expecting this to be a busy one! Seats are first come, first served, so arrive early. Claim yours with a piece of clothing or personal item while you grab a drink upstairs. Once they're gone, they're gone! ++

On Thursday 10th September, we're heading underground into the dazzling, provocative world of late-60s Tokyo.

Join us in the downstairs cinema room at The Ill Repute for Toshio Matsumoto’s Funeral Parade of Roses; a feverish collision of queer cinema, avant-garde experimentation, documentary and Greek tragedy that still feels astonishingly modern more than half a century later.

Set within Tokyo’s underground gay and transgender scene, the film follows Eddie, played by the magnetic Peter, as she navigates love, jealousy and identity against a backdrop of bars, parties, protests and the exploding counterculture of 1960s Japan.

More than half a century ago, Matsumoto was putting gender identity, queer lives and people living outside conventional ideas of masculinity and femininity right at the centre of the screen. Rather than treating them simply as outsiders looking into mainstream society, Funeral Parade of Roses immerses us in their world, mixing its fictional story with documentary-style interviews about sexuality, gender and identity.

Its language inevitably belongs to its time, but its openness and curiosity towards gender feels remarkably progressive. There are moments that could easily be mistaken for conversations being had today, making it all the more extraordinary that the film was released 56 years ago.

And Funeral Parade of Roses is anything but conventional in form, too. Matsumoto tears apart the rules of filmmaking as he goes, jumping between narrative and documentary, breaking the fourth wall, cutting wildly through time and filling the screen with pop art, psychedelia, sex, humour and sudden bursts of violence.

Its influence can be felt everywhere from punk and music videos to the films of Stanley Kubrick, who famously cited it as an influence on A Clockwork Orange.

▶ The Ill Repute, Old Market - downstairs cinema room
▶ Doors 7:30pm / Film 8pm sharp (no late entry)
▶ Free entry - first come, first served (arrive early to guarantee a seat)
▶ Drinks and snacks available at the bar

Be Kind Rewind Bristol is a free bi-weekly Thursday cult film night celebrating strange, beloved and offbeat cinema in the downstairs screening room at The Ill Repute.