Ogawa Shinsuke and Ogawa Pro: The Battle Front for the Liberation of Japan - Summer in Sanrizuka + Sanrizuka — The Three Day War

19 Nov 2016

Two raw and vital films from a series of seven taking sides with the peasants struggling against the loss of their lands to build a new international airport and the violence by the police.

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.

Programme Notes

The Battle Front for the Liberation of Japan - Summer in Sanrizuka

Ogawa Shinsuke and the members of the newly founded Ogawa Pro settled in the village of Heta to record and participate in these struggles. Summer in Sanrizuka was the ﬁrst of seven ﬁlms the collective made about these conﬂicts and it established their method of ﬁlmmaking while living with their subjects and taking sides with them in their struggles. This is a raw, vital, disjunctively edited and sometimes chaotic “action ﬁlm”, following a group of militant students and documenting the ﬁghts against the riot police.

The Battle Front for the Liberation of Japan - Summer in Sanrizuka (Nihon kaiho sensen – Sanrizuka no natsu), Japan 1968, 16mm, b/w, 108 mins, Japanese with English subtitles.
Sanrizuka: The Three Day War

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.

Sanrizuka: The Three Day War (Sanrizuka: daisanji kyosei sokuryo soshi toso), Japan 1970, 16mm, b/w, 50 mins, Japanese with English subtitles.

With thanks to the Athénée Français Cultural Centre (Matsumoto Masamichi, Takasaki Ikuko), Yamagata IDFF (Hama Haruka, Oki Masaharu), Hirasawa Go, Jeanne Poret (Le Bal), Jed Rapfogel.

We are offering a special multibuy deal for the Ogawa Season: book tickets for 2-5 screenings and get them for £9 each, or 6-9 screenings and get them for £8 each.