While so many films about death focus on the sunset years of senior characters reflecting quietly on long lives lived Tengai Amano's "Twilight" does the exact opposite. Going against expectations this 33-minute short tells the story of a young boy (played by actress Daiko Ishimaru) who refuses to accept his own death. Without a doubt the death of a child is a tragic circumstance, but "Twilight" isn't a film heavy with mourning. Instead our protagonist goes on a wonder filled chase sequence that includes such road blocks as a diabolical witch, a pesky coffin that keeps popping out from around corners, and "Being John Malkovich"-esque recurring cut-outs of his face that appear on walls, in windows, and of course the numerous actors cast by Amano. There's even a scene that has the boy watching Amano's film in a movie theatre. With Amano incorporating stop-motion animation and shooting the entire film at 18 frames per second as opposed to the standard 24fps "Twilight" ends up coming across as a giddy mix of avant-garde Shuji Terayama and "Keystone Cops" Mack Sennett.
"Twilight" won the grand prize of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and the Melbourne International Film Festival (Short Film Programme).


Rip specs:


Format            : AVI at 1 671 Kbps
Length            : 399 MiB for 33mn 23s 835ms

Video #0          : MPEG-4 Visual at 1 556 Kbps
Aspect            : 592 x 448 (1.321) at 23.976 fps

Audio #0          : MPEG Audio at 102 Kbps
Infos             : 2 channels, 48.0 KHz
Language          : japanese