Shinsuke Ogawa

The ostensible subject of this film is the growing, drying, peeling and packaging of persimmons in the tiny Japanese village of Kaminoyama. The inhabitants explain that it is the perfect combination of earth, wind and rain that makes their village’s persimmons superior to those grown anywhere else, including the village just a few miles away. The film’s larger subject, however, is the disappearance of Japan’s traditional culture, the end of a centuries-old way of life.

Devotion investigates the extremely complex and heirarchical relationships among a committed group of Japanese filmmakers who dedicated up to 30 years of their lives making films for one man-Ogawa Shinsuke. Members of Ogawa Pro filmed the student movement of the late 60's; the fight by farmers to save their land from government confiscaton for the Narita airport at Sanrizuka; and the village life of a small farming community, Magino Village, in northern Japan. These heartbreaking and sometimes funny stories have never been told on film before. Rare footage, stills, and diaries with interviews with Oshima Nagisa, Hara Kazuo and Robert Kramer make this historical inquiry visually exciting as well as valuable.

This film is a record of the first Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. It reflects the various ways the festival was given shape by nascent global changes embodied by Perestroika, the Tiananmen Square massacre, and many other contemporaneous events.

This film is a record of the first Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. It reflects the various ways the festival was given shape by nascent global changes embodied by Perestroika, the Tiananmen Square massacre, and many other contemporaneous events.

The movie compiles footage taken by Ogawa Production for a period of more than ten years after the collective moved to Magino village. Unique to this film are fictional reenactments of the history of the village in the sections titled "The Tale of Horikiri Goddess" and "The Origins of Itsutsudomoe Shrine". Ogawa combines all the techniques that were developed in his previous films to simultaneously express multiple layers of time—the temporality of rice growing and of human life, personal life histories, the history of the village, the time of the Gods, and new time created through theatrical reenactment—bring them into a unified whole. The faces of the Magino villagers appear in numerous roles transcending time and space—sometimes as individuals, sometimes as people who carry the history of the village in their memories, sometimes as storytellers reciting myths, and even as members of the crowd in the fictional sequences.

오가와가 과학영화를 만들어 자기 본래의 자리로 돌아왔을 때, 그는 일본의 국가와 마을에 관해 생각해 볼 장소를 발견하였다. 일본 산하의 심장부를 전체적으로 조망하면서 오가와는 여전히 아이들을 도시로 피신시키면서 전쟁의 소용돌이와 생존을 위한 투쟁을 하고 있는 마을, 후루야시키 마을을 발견하였다. 이 다큐멘터리는 후루야시키 마을을 담고 있다.

A Visit to Ogawa Productions offers a rare insight into the social and cinematic philosophy of one of Japan's best-known documentary film collectives. As the film reveals, Ogawa Productions' in-depth portraits of Japanese society - whether of protest movements or traditional agricultural life - grew out of an unusual commitment to integrate themselves with the communities they filmed, to the extent that their film-making literally became an alternative lifestyle.

This rural documentary features poet Jin Makabe. Thoughts about agriculture, memories, landscapes.

This rural documentary features poet Jin Makabe. Thoughts about agriculture, memories, landscapes.

This rural documentary features poet Jin Makabe. Thoughts about agriculture, memories, landscapes.

Ogawa Production Staff, who moved to Makinomura in Yamagata Prefecture, looks at sericulture, sericulture labor, agriculture ... Let's listen to people's words and stare for the sake of staring ...

In the mid-1970s, protests were waning across Japan after the Red Army scandal of Asama Cottage. In Sanrizuka, people were weary of the violence and the airport was well under construction. As for Ogawa Productions, they invited criticism by pulling out and moving to a quiet village in northern Japan. But when protesters back in Sanrizuka erected a tall tower at the end of one runway, they sent a crew to document what happened. This became the final film of the Sanrizuka Series.

After the waning of the protests in Sanrizuka, Ogawa Pro started questioning the future of the collective and looking for other subjects to film. Following the method developed in the previous films, the filmmakers moved to the slum of Kotobuchi in the port city of Yokohama, where more than 6000 people were struggling to get by without any means of survival, exposed to industrial accidents and diseases. The result is one of the most moving films produced by the collective, a series of beautifully filmed portraits, voicing the silenced stories and songs of a group of people living in this community. Credit: ICA London

Shinsuke Ogawa documentary about the life of the farmers in Heta Village opposing their resettlement due to the construction of Narita Airport.

Shinsuke Ogawa documentary about the life of the farmers in Heta Village opposing their resettlement due to the construction of Narita Airport.

The third film in Ogawa Productions’ Narita/Sanrizuka series of documentaries about the resistance by farmers and activists to the construction of the Narita Airport.

It's the mid 60s. Tokyo needs a new airport. There isn't anywhere in Tokyo to put it, so the government decides on displacing some adjacent villages. The peasants of these villages are not having it. What results is a remarkable act of protest and civil disobedience.

수백년을 이어져 내려온 마을이 공항 건설이라는 당면 과제 앞에서 철저하게 파괴된다. 농민들은 말한다. "낡은 인간관계는 백지가 되었다. 새로운 인간관계를 만들어야 한다"고. 신공항 건설 반대 투쟁은 근원적인 인간의 문제를 제기한다. 피를 나눈 형제가 찬성파가 되어 분열하고 갈등한다. 농민들 한 가운데에 선 카메라는 긴장감을 가지고 촬영은 계속한다.

In 1968 the plan by the government to construct a new international airport in the fields of Sanrizuka near Tokyo unleashed one of the most important and enduring social upheavals in the history of postwar Japan. The plan sought to evict thousands of farmers from their lands without any sort of respect for the locals’ rights. Their resistance to eviction was met with extreme violence by the police. Activists from all over the country, including thousands of students, joined with the farmers in their mounting struggle. As the combats in Sanrizuka became more intense and the numbers of police increased, the collective became more involved in the fighting. Sanrizuka: The Three Day War was what Ogawa called a “bullet film”, an immediate and powerful piece of agitprop shot in three days and intended to be seen as quickly and widely as possible. Credit: ICA London

In 1968, Ogawa decided to form Ogawa Productions and locate it at the newly announced construction site of Narita International Airport in a district called Sanrizuka. Ogawa chose to locate his company in the most radical of the villages, Heta. Some farmers immediately sold their land; others vehemently protested and drew the support of social movements across the country. Together they clashed with riot police sent in to protect surveyors, who were plotting out the airport. Summer in Sanrizuka is a messy film – its chaos communicating the passions and actions on the ground.

A film made with a group of student and worker activists during the Haneda 1967 protests against Japan’s cooperation with the US and the Vietnam war. The film subverts the conventions of mainstream television news coverage to investigate in great detail the killing of a young protester during clashes with the riot police and thus denounces the increasing use of repressive violence by the government.

A galvanising documentary about the organised resistance of a group of students barricaded at the Takasaki City University of Economics. The university student struggles at the end of the 1960s in Japan were the culmination of over a decade of protests, social dissent and political unrest. All this gave energy to the student movement, which displayed original and sustained forms of organisation and resistance against the government and which would spread to universities all over the country. Together with the filmmakers of the recently formed collective Jieiso, Ogawa Shinsuke joined a group of students barricading themselves inside the Takasaki City University of Economics. Shot over the course of a year, this film documents the nature of the political discussion and organisation as well as the fierce debates going on among the students and their violent struggles with the authorities. Credit: ICA London

오가와 신스께 감독의 데뷔작. 1965년 일본 문부성은 대학 통신교육 제도의 개선안을 발표하는데 이를 개악으로 보고 반대 운동에 나선 통신교육생들의 투쟁을 기록한 다큐멘터리. 첫 작품부터 오가와 감독은 소수 약자의 권리를 옹호하는 편에 섰으며 영화의 기획, 예산, 제작, 상영에 이르기까지 일본에서는 전례가 없었던 독자적인 자주제작의 방식을 택했다. 이 작품에 참여했던 인원들이 이후 오가와 프로덕션의 핵심이 된다.

Documentary at a school in Nagano Prefecture