KISS IT, FAN!
Wed 13 May 6.30pm - double bill FREE EVENT
Selected by the artist Phil Collins, Shady Lane Film Club is a series of film screenings exploring themes of sub-culture and fandom in connection with Collins solo exhibition the world won’t listen currently in Tramway 2.
Funeral Parade of the Roses
Film (Toshio Matsumoto, Japan, 1969, 105 min.) Credited as being an influence on Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, the 1969 cult Japanese film Funeral Parade of Roses is a flamboyant adaptation of the traditional tragedy Oedipus Rex set in the underground gay counterculture of 1960s Tokyo. From its blissed out opening sequence to the bizarre and bloody ending, this is a film in which every single image represents either complete beauty or a complete surprise. A startling combination of visual flourishes, bizarre documentary interludes, animation and youth gang imagery set against a psychedelic soundtrack, the film follows the story of cross-dressing club kid Eddie who is plagued by hallucinatory, violent memories of his late mother and inevitably gets caught up in a gory tragedy whilst fighting for his lovers heart. Heavily redolent of the era in which it was made, this is a work whose striking images and colourful underground milieu, populated by a rag-tag collection of cross-dressers, bohemians, druggies and drop-outs, bares easy comparisons with the environment fostered by Andy Warhol and his disciples at his Factory studio in New York.
Hail the New Puritan
Film (Charles Atlas, UK, 1985, 84 min.) Choreographed by Michael Clark and directed by fabled New York video pioneer Charles Atlas, one of the premier interpreters of dance, theatre and performance on video, Hail the New Puritan , is a fictional “docufantasy” of bohemian subculture in Thatcher-era London, depicting a decadent day-in-the-life of brilliant, 23-year-old glam-punk choreographer Michael Clark. Filmed from his mid-day wake up through to bedtime at dawn, Atlas seamlessly integrates Clark's extraordinary dance performances into the docu-narrative flow. Clark rehearses his company, is interviewed by a journalist, stages several dances and lustily unwinds with friends. Throughout, Atlas intersperses shots of London streets, following a wandering young man who embodies the dispossessed Britain. Hail the New Puritan features appearances by punk drag legend Leigh Bowery as well as Grayson Perry, Brix and Mark E. Smith.
Tramway, 25 Albert Drive, Glasgow, G41 2PE
Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201
