The Battle Front for the Liberation of Japan – Summer in Narita

Posted 13/09/2014

In ARKIPEL 2014 - Electoral Risk, Festival Updates

SP OGAWA 1 / FRI. 12 SEP, 15.00 / CINEMA XXI – TIM

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18+

Country of production Japan
Language Japanese
Subtitle English
108 min, B/W, 1968

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Ini merupakan dokumenter pertama Ogawa Shinsuke dengan Ogawa Pro-nya, dalam kesaksian dan keterlibatan langsung pada gerakan sosial kaum tani dari desa-desa di Kabupaten Sanrizuka, terutama desa Heta yang paling radikal yang menjadi lokasi aktual filem ini. Radikalisasi tidak terelakkan ketika warga desa bersama mahasiswa dan para provokator mulai merancang gerakan kolektif untuk melakukan pembangkangan dan perlawanan terhadap upaya perampasan tanah-tanah kehidupan masyarakat desa demi pembangunan Bandara Internasional Tokyo. Dalam filem ini, kita akan menelusuri beberapa tahap penggambaran peristiwa, mulai persiapan demonstrasi, barisan protes massa sampai ke tingkat yang ekstrem —terutama dari kaum perempuannya— hingga diskusi teoretis tentang perlawanan rakyat tani. Sebuah pendekatan dari sinema keberpihakan yang dapat mengaktifkan pemikiran politis kepada kita sebagai penonton, maupun memantik argumen mengenai pendekatan dokumenter ini.

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This film is the first documentary of Ogawa Shinsuke and his Ogawa Pro’s in witnessing and participating directly in the peasants’ social movement in the villages in Sanrizuka District, especially the Heta village, the most radical one that became the actual location of this film. The radicalization is inevitable when the villagers, together with the students and provocateurs, started to plan a collective movement to resist and fight against the seizure attempts of the villagers’ living lands for the sake of Tokyo International Airport’s development. In this film, we are asked to explore several stages of the event’s descriptions, beginning with the rally preparation, the mass protest’s lineup to an extreme level—especially by the women—to the theoretical discussion about the peasants’ resistance. It’s an approach of cinematic partisanship that can activate our political thinking as audience or trigger arguments about this documentary approach.

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Japan

Shinsuke Ogawa

(25 Juni 1935 – 7 Februari 1992) adalah sutradara dokumenter terkemuka Jepang. Bersama Noriaki Tsuchimoto, Ogawa ditahbiskan sebagai “dua tokoh yang mendefinisikan filem dokumenter Jepang”.

Memulai karirnya di Perusahaan Filem Iwanami (Iwanami Eiga) dengan membuat filem-filem kehumasan bersama sutradara-sutradara penting seperti Tsuchimoto, Kazuo Kuroki, dan Susumu Hani, Ogawa lalu bekerja secara independen untuk menyutradarai dokumenter tentang gerakan politik radikal Jepang di dekade 1960an dan 1970an. Karya dokumenternya yang paling terkenal adalah seri “Sanrizuka” atau “Narita” yang merekam perjuangan kaum tani dan mahasiswa dalam memprotes dan mencegah pembangunan Bandar Udara Internasional Narita.

Sebanyak 25 filem dokumenter telah dihasilkan dari tangan Ogawa Shinsuke bersama Ogawa Production-nya, antara akhir 50an hingga awal 90an, menjelang dekade meninggalnya sang sutradara. Filmografi Ogawa Production terbagi menjadi dua bagian. Bagian pertama terdiri dari tujuh judul monumental yang dirilis antara tahun 1968-73. Diawali dengan Summer in Narita yang mencatat pelawanan para petani lokal di Heta terhadap keputusan pemerintah untuk membangun Bandar Udara Internasional di tanah mereka. Sebuah masa yang disebut oleh Abe Mark Nornes (‘Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Post-War Japanese Documentary’) sebagai “salah satu perjuangan sosial paling traumatis dalam sejarah moderen Jepang.” Puncak dari protes-protes yang dilancarkan kaum tani tersebut ditangkap dalam salah satu dari seri filem Narita: Peasants of the Second Fortress (yang layak dijuluk “Seven Samurai”-nya dokumenter protes sosial) di mana rakyat tani desa dibantu golongan mahasiswa dan anggota kelompok kiri radikal terhimpun sebagai massa 20.000 demonstran berhadapan dengan 30.000 personel polisi. Tidak berlebihan, kiranya, jika keadaan tersebut telah mendorong Jepang ke dalam situasi mendekati perang sipil.

Paruh kedua dari sejarah filmografi Ogawa yakni ketika ia bersama rekan-rekan tim kerjanya pindah ke daerah utara Jepang, di desa kecil Magino, propinsi Yamagata, untuk selama 16 tahun berikutnya mereka hidup sebagai petani yang menanam padinya sendiri sambil mencatat secara mendetil, sejarah, cerita rakyat, dan rutinitas sehari-hari komunitas petani setempat. Periode ini menghasilkan dua karya luarbiasa, yaitu A Furuyashiki Village (1982) dan The Magino Village Story (1986). Gerilya sinematik dalam upaya mempertajam pendekatan atas gagasan, konsep, dan bentuk baru pada dokumenter melalui produksi kolektif Ogawa Shinsuke dan rekan-rekannya serta masyarakat desa tani, itu jelas merupakan realisasi paling politis bagi aktivisme sinema dokumenter. Ogawa Shinsuke juga adalah salah satu pendiri Festival Filem Dokumenter Internasional Yamagata.

(25 June 1935 – 7 February 1992) was a Japanese documentary film director. Ogawa and Noriaki Tsuchimoto have been called the “two figures [that] tower over the landscape of Japanese documentary.

Ogawa began his career at Iwanami Eiga making PR (public relations) films alongside other important directors such as Tsuchimoto, Kazuo Kuroki, and Susumu Hani.

Turning independent, he first made documentaries about radical political movements in 1960s and 1970s Japan, most famously the “Sanrizuka” or “Narita” series, which recorded the struggle by farmers and student protesters to prevent the construction of the Narita International Airport.

Ogawa Shinsuke and Ogawa Productions were responsible for about 25 films between the late 1950s and the early 1990s, when Ogawa died.Ogawa Production filmography falls fairly neatly into two halves. The first consists of the monumental seven-title series released between 1968-73 and beginning with The Battle Front for the Liberation of Japan – Summer in Narita, which chronicled in gargantuan detail the struggle between local farmers against the government’s decision to build Tokyo’s new Narita international airport on their land, a time described by Abe Mark Nornes (Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Post-War Japanese Documentary) as “one of the most traumatic social struggles in modern Japanese history.” The peak of the protests, captured in the film Sanrizuka – Peasants of the Second Fortress (1971) (“the Seven Samurai of social protest documentaries”) saw the farmers’ ranks swelled by hordes of sympathetic students and members from radical leftist groups; a grand total of some 20,000 protesters amassed against 30,000 police. It’s no exaggeration to say that Japan was effectively in a state of near civil war at the peak of the Narita protests.

The second half of Ogawa’s history saw the whole collective decamping up north to the small village of Magino in Yamagata Prefecture where for 16 years they lived communally as farmers growing their own rice, while cataloguing the history, folklore, and daily practices of the enduring local rural communities, and in the most meticulous of detail: the results include two extraordinary discursive works, notably Furuyashiki Village (1982) and The Sundial Carved with a Thousand Years of Notches – The Magino Village Story (1986).

The cinematic guerilla in an effort to sharpen the approach on ideas, concept, and new form of documentary through collective production by Ogawa Shinsuke and his colleagues as well as the rural communities of farmers, is clearly the most politically realization for activism of documentary cinema. Ogawa Shinsuke is also one of the founders of the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival.

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