1961-1970 Akio Jissoji Asian Drama Japan

Akio Jissoji – Yoiyami semareba aka When Twilight Draws Near (1969)

adminSeptember 18, 2019

1 2,443

Here’s Jissoji Akio’s impressive theatrical debut. Distributed by ATG and with a script by Oshima Nagisa, it’s a fascinating dissection of 1960s Japanese youth angst. Oshima wrote the screenplay for television in 1964, but due to the subversiveness of the story it never got made there. Which doesn’t come as a surprise, considering that the film consists of four students in a room, who decide to leave the gas on and bet money on who will stay there the longest…

Quote:
In 1969 Jissoji left TBS, founded his own production company and made the 43-minute long When Twilight Draws Near (Yoiyami Semareba), based on a script by Nagisa Oshima that was originally written for a TV feature for TV Tokyo. The film was released by ATG together with Oshima’s Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (Shinjuku Dorobo Nikki, 1969). ATG subsequently produced Jissoji’s following films, starting with This Transient Life. Together with Kazuo Kuroki and Shuji Terayama he became ATG’s most important director of the 1970s. — Roland Domenig at Midnight Eye