FUNKY FOREST: THE FIRST CONTACT (Japan – 2005)
Directed by: Katsuhito Ishii
Starring: Tadanobu Asano, Andrew Alfieri, Ryo Case, Hideaki Anno
“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 21⁄2 hours. Breathtakingly, often hilariously bizarre, it's nobody's idea of a commercial sureshot.”
- Dennis Harvey, Variety

Not since David Lynch slunk onto the scene with ERASERHEAD has a more singular vision broken out of one man’s skull and run riot across the silver screen seducing audiences with its sugary strangeness. But FUNKY FOREST: FIRST CONTACT is a hermetically sealed, fifth dimensional artifact from Planet Japan beaming into our galaxy through your eyes. The only movie with an A side and a B side this is a full-on invasion of three-dimensional Earth brains by twelfth dimensional alien consciousnesses.

From the director and cast who brought you last year’s Audience Award Winner A TASTE OF TEA, this flick invites you to drink the Kool Aid, take the red pill, show us your dancing and break the chains of reason and logic that bind our brains. Director Katsuhito Ishii (who directed the animation in KILL BILL VOL 1) and a crew of ace comedic actors (including Tadanobu Asano as the laconic Guitar Brother) have made a movie featuring TV’s made of giant buttholes, powered by belly button energy and capable of producing miniature sushi chefs. But, as the Shorty Trio says, “Some days people laugh, some days…they don’t.” With its shoe obsession, fixation on Snickers bars, and its firm belief that the secrets of the universe can be unlocked by dancing, FUNKY FOREST: THE FIRST CONTACT strips everyday life of meaning, turns mundane tasks into bizarre rituals, and makes surrealist hay out of our most sacred ideas. This is not a movie. This is an invitation to join a dancing army of holy fools and travel through time and space to our homeworld of Planet Piko Riko.