When Twilight Draws Near/Twilight Falls and more

When Twilight Draws Near/Twilight Falls

1968. Japan. Directed by Akio Jissoji. Bored by the emptiness of everyday life, four students gather to play dangerous games in an apartment. Nagisa Oshima approached noted television director Jissoji to adapt his story of reckless youth, and Jissoji responded with dramatically experimental filmmaking conceits that influenced such later films as This Transient Life (1970) and Mandala (1971). Twilight had a successful theatrical run on a bill with Oshima’s Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (1969). In Japanese; English subtitles. 44 min.

Yunbogi’s Diary/Diary of Yunbogi

1965. Japan. Directed by Nagisa Oshima. An ethereal montage of still images with darkly somber undertones, Yunbogi’s Diary is based on photographs that Oshima took during his two-month research trip to South Korea in 1965, during which he was haunted by his encounters with impoverished street children in Seoul. The voiceover narration comprises diary entries from a six-year-old Korean boy as well as Oshima’s own reflections on Japanese-Korean relations, a controversial subject that he revisited in his later films Sing a Song of Sex and Death by Hanging. In Japanese; English subtitles. 24 min.