ORDER/SUBSCRIBE          SPONSORS          CONTACT          WHAT'S NEW          INDEX/SEARCH

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviewer biography

Current Reviews

Review Articles

Book Reviews Archive

A Visit to Ogawa Productions

by Yasui Yoshio, Producer; Oshige Jun’ ichiro, Director
Distributed by First Run/Icarus Films, Brooklyn, NY, 2001
VHS, 62 minutes, color
Sales: $390
Distributor’s website:
http://www.frif.com.

Reviewed by Soo C. Hostetler
Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, USA

soo.hostetler@uni.edu

This film examines the creative ideology of director Shinsuke Ogawa (1935—1992), one of Japan’s greatest documentary filmmakers, using an interview conducted by Nagisa Oshima. The interview occurred in 1981, in Furuyashikimura, Japan, where Ogawa was filming a documentary regarding the various aspects of rice growing. Most of the interview was conducted during a sit-down session inside the small house that was used both as a home and a studio for Ogawa and his crew. The film gives us a truly in-depth look at the mastery of a great documentary film artist.

Ogawa’s philosophy was to film not only the cycle of rice growing but also to fully immerse himself and his film crew in the daily experience of being a rice farmer. They built their own rice fields and lived as if they were rice growers to better observe and understand the subject they were documenting. He said that his intention was to record the "language of rice" and to show "rice as a life force." He depicted rice as a living organism.

At the time of the interview, he had already lived in the tiny village for eight years. The first four years were considered pre-production during which no filming took place at all. Instead, he and his crew experienced their subject by getting to know the villagers and by engaging in research about rice growing. They examined their rice fields seven days a week, year round. Ogawa kept detailed daily records of all his experiments and research, even when they failed. As a matter of perspective, he emphasized the difference between looking into the field, as opposed to being in the field, as is the view of the farmer.

Ogawa was not only concerned with filming a scientific record of rice growing but was actually far more interested in recording the people and their history of farming. There was a collaborative relationship between the villagers and his crew in which they learned from each other’s experiences, whether homespun or scientific. When Ogawa was asked how he financed his project, he candidly replied that he and his crew had their own struggles. This led to a discussion about whether farming and documentary filmmaking sometimes both struggle to survive in comparable ways.

Much of Ogawa’s motivation for creating his documentaries comes from his own sense of duty to the preservation of cultural traditions. This film is very sensitive in the way in which it portrays Ogawa’s enthusiasm and his philosophical outlook, which is reflected in his feelings for the environment, all of humanity, and the rich precision of his art.

(Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review, Volume 20, Number 4, Summer 2005.)

 

 




Updated 1st September 2005


Contact LDR: ldr@leonardo.org

Contact Leonardo: isast@leonardo.info


copyright © 2005 ISAST