Search The Archive

Search the film archive

Katsuhti Ishii teams up with two like-minded directors and creates a film, well, from another planet!

Funky Forest invites you to get out of your mind and experience a world where the secrets of the universe can be unlocked by dancing, where freaky dreams, strange aliens, kinetic forehead laser beams and babbling hot-spring vixens are the norm and where saving the planet of Piko-Riko is of primo importance… and it stars Asano Tadanobu.

Funky Forest: The First Contact ignores every convention of filmmaking and may be the only film with an A-side and a B-side. Weaving together short stories with recurring characters to create a pop culture monstrosity with mind-bending dance scenes, Funky Forest seduces with its strangeness and promises a one-of-a-kind experience.

“The annals of strange just got thicker with the arrival of Funky Forest: The First Contact, a surreal sci-fi-musical-whatsit whose resistance to thematic or narrative logic renders viewers thoroughly - but not unpleasantly - bewildered for two and a half hours. Breath-takingly, often hilariously bizarre.” - Variety

---

D/S Katsuhito Ishii, Shunichiro Miki P Norishisa Harada, Taishi Zto, Kazutoshi Wadakura WS Phantom Film L Japanese w/English subtitles TD 35mm/2005/150mins

Katsuhito Ishii was born in Niigata, Japan, in 1966. His films include Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl (1998), Party 7 (2000) and The Taste of Tea (2004).