Documentary Director

Shinsuke Ogawa is a Japanese documentary film director, Shinsuke was the most influential independent documentary filmmaker in postwar Japan. He began his career a Iwanami Production making films along sides other directors. 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 in Sanrizuka. Ogawa's was a committed form of documentary, which clearly took the side of those combatting unjust power. A growing sense that he did not understand the life of the farmers he was filming, however, led Ogawa and his crew, collectively called Ogawa Productions, to leave for Magino in Yamagata Prefecture where they spent decades filming the life and histories of everyday farmers while living with them and pursuing agriculture. The "Magino" films became the epitome of Ogawa's stance towards documentary: that one can only record a reality that one has been truly immersed in.

Link: Narita: Peasants of the Second Fortress