Director
Ten years ago, the Kogures moved from Tokyo to a satoyama area (an area where traditional sustainable agriculture has been long practiced) in a snowy mountain village in Echigo-Tsumari where they repaired an old thatched farmhouse and began growing organic, pesticide-free rice. Their life may appear unrestrained and free of worldly cares but they cannot make it alone. All the work is done together with their cheerful neighbors. Then, in the spring of 2011, an earthquake strikes on the border of Nagano and Niigata prefectures. The Kogures’ house is destroyed, but they decide to rebuild. An adventure told in a fantastical tone that expresses the joy of living with a sometimes harsh natural world.
Director of Photography
Satō Makoto discovered documentary film when he visited Minamata (well known as the former site of an environmental disaster) as a student, and worked on Katori Naotaka’s The Innocent Sea. While touring Japan with the film, he met people who lived by the polluted Agano River in Niigata and decided to make a film about them. Living there with seven crew members for three years, Living on the River Agano was completed in 1992 and showed people who live with the river and work in agriculture and fishing, quietly probing the cruelty of nature destroyed. Ten years later, and after attending several funerals of people who appeared in the first feature, the team returned to the area. The resulting film Memories of Agano is a ghostly poem on people, fields, stories, songs and buildings receding into absence, the power of images and the strength of sound to revive the past.
Director of Photography
1929년 아가노 강에 댐이 건설된 이후, 쇼와 전력회사가 강에 버린 유기수은으로 인해 미나마타병에 걸린 주민들을 밀착 취재한 작품. 강의 오염으로 어업도 불가능해지고, 병든 노인들만 남게 된 아가노의 고통을 공식적으로 인정받기 위한 노력이 계속된다.
