Ogawa Shinsuke and Ogawa Pro: The Wages of Resistance: The Narita Stories

The European première of a timely documentary about the farmers left behind and still resisting after the conflicts in Sanrizuka and the construction of Narita airport.

Only a few people are still living today in the once-populated farming fields of Sanrizuka. Their lives were forever altered by the construction of Narita International Airport – the biggest hub for international air traffic in Japan, with over 600 flights taking off and landing every day. Various forms of resistance continue today as the Government has announced the extension of the runways further into the remaining fields to serve the 2020 Olympics.

Forty-five years after the Sanrizuka films directed by Ogawa Pro, the cinematographer Otsu Koshiro, who shot Summer in Sanrizuka, returned to the fields for three years to film the people who had remained there. Using this footage, as well as rushes from the archives of Ogawa Pro, images from Kitai Kazuo's 1971 photobook Sanrizuka and a score composed by Otomo Yoshihide, editor Daishima Haruhiko has crafted a timely film. What is left of the farming landscape and the livelihood of these farmers clashes with the roar of the airplanes above, bringing the past and the present together.

The Wages of Resistance: The Narita Stories (Sanrizuka ni Ikiru), dir. Otsu Koshiro and Daishima Haruhiko, Japan 2015, DCP, colour, 140 mins, Japanese with English subtitles.

With thanks to Daishima Haruhiko, Documentary Dream Center (Fujioka Asako).

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.