Film/Video JAPANESE NEW WAVE CINEMA WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 1999, $6 ($4 WALKER MEMBERS) ADMITS TO BOTH SHOWS AUDITORIUM

FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES (BARA NO SORETSU)
DIRECTED BY TOSHIO MATSUMOTO
7 PM
The sardonic wit, formal playfulness, and sexual iconoclasm of Parade paved the way for a new generation of artists. Set in Tokyo's "gay underground" and acted entirely by gays, the film is a wicked parody of the Oedipus story. Celebrated transvestite Peter (who played The Fool in Kurosawa's Ran) stars as the hostess of the Genet Bar in Shinjuku. Having murdered his mother and slept with his father, he proceeds to gouge out his eyes. A charming "time capsule" with its psychedelia, leatherette vests, bounteous mascara, orgiastic pot parties, and pop Brechtianisms--"That shocked you, didn't it?" the director asks in a professorial interjection--Parade is also a disturbing portrait of the effect the repressive culture of "official" Japan has on gay life there. 1969, Japan, 105 minutes.

HAIR OPERA (MOHATSU KAGEKI)
DIRECTED BY YURI OBITANI
9 PM
Japanese cinema is replete with odd erotic obsessions, but none so crazed as that of Hair Opera. As the title suggests, hair--"pubic and underarm especially"--is the fetish that makes this "opera" hit the high notes. A young filmmaker (and bad singer) who removed his hippie hair in 1969 by burning it off,encounters an artist whose new show consists of pristinely mounted white cards carrying specimens of her many lovers' pubic hair. (In the case of prepubescent boys, the cards are empty.) The filmmaker becomes obsessed with her, and in a series of video letters, he plunges into hair fetishism while she retreats in irritation, then alarm. 1992, Japan, 60 minutes.