One of the lengthiest and most obscure debates among cinema fans regards the topic of what is cult, what art-house and what mainstream. Usually, discussions like that do not reach a definite conclusion, however, there are some themes, notions and events that define what is cult, which is the point of interest of this particular list.
The filmmakers that shot the films in this list challenged the notions of everything considered normal and even acceptable by society, in terms of politics, culture, history, society, violence and sex. This tactic originated from their non-existent regard for commercial success and resulted in broken taboos, offensive and even blasphemous images, characters, dialogues and themes, and even to a number of hilarious
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Funeral Parade of Roses (Toshio Matsumoto, 1969)
Toshio Matsumoto is one of the most renowned artists and academics in Japan, as, besides being one of the most prominent members of the New Japanese New Wave in film and an accomplished photographer, he is also a professor and Dean of Arts at the Kyoto University of Art and Design, and the President of the Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences. "Funeral Parade of Roses" is his debut and his most distinct film.
Trying to survive her dramatic past, a young transvestite strikes an affair with an older man, who is also the owner of the nightclub she works. She does not not though that he is the one holding the key to the tragic destiny she is meant to face.
The film is a masterful combination of avant-garde and exploitation aesthetics that results in a collage of dialogues, memories, interviews, thoughts, lyrics and extracts presented in psychedelically vague narration, rather than a "regular" film. Furthermore, Matsumoto managed to demolish almost every taboo existing at the time: nudity, sex, drugs, but most of all, the unfaltering depiction of the Japanese gay society through the eyes of a transvestite made the majority of the other films of the movement seem almost