So I recently rewatched Funeral Parade of Roses, a work of Japanese queer cinema from 1969. I’d watched it a good decade plus ago, while I was still in college, and long before my egg cracked. I was struck by the film then, but watching it now, years after my transition began, it hits different.
Funeral Parade of Roses was recently given a Criterion re-release and remaster, but I was watching it as a bootleg video file that a friend of mine had burned to CD, with a rip from a LaserDisc. It felt a bit like watching samizdat, I suppose. This rare, forbidden document of queer and trans life in another place and time.
I wonder how many film nerds or art movie fans watched this over the years, either when it came out, or on video—bootleg or otherwise—and saw themselves in the cast, or the story. It has to have awakened a few people. I kinda wish it had awakened something in me, but hey, that awakening happened eventually anyway.