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Forest of Pressure Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary Abé Mark Nornes EVENTS: |
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$75.00 Cloth |
An original examination of the postwar Japanese documentary. Ogawa Productions—known in Asia as Ogawa Pro—was an influential filmmaking collective that started in the 1960s under the direction of Ogawa Shinsuke (1936–1992). Between 1968 and the mid-1970s, Ogawa Pro electrified the Japanese student movement with its Sanrizuka documentary series—eight films chronicling the massive protests over the construction of the Narita airport—which has since become the standard against which documentaries are measured in Japan. A critical biography of a collective, Forests of Pressure explores the emergence of socially committed documentary filmmaking in postwar Japan. Analyzing Ogawa Pro’s films and works by other Japanese filmmakers, Abé Mark Nornes addresses key issues in documentary theory and practice, including individual and collective cinema production modes and the relationship between subject and object. Benefiting from unprecedented access to Ogawa Pro’s archives and interviews with former members, Forest of Pressure is an innovative look at the fate of political filmmaking in the wake of the movement’s demise. “Nornes provides an invaluable history of postwar Japanese documentary filmmaking and positions Ogawa Productions vis-à-vis such artists as Naomi Kawase and Kazuo Hara. Nornes's brilliance comes as no surprise, but the book's captivating entertainment value is an unexpected delight. Essential.” —Choice “Abé Mark Nornes has stepped in to produce the most significant book on documentary I’ve read . . . Forest of Pressure is a gripping portrait of a charismatic, quixotic, spendthrift activist, innovator and fantasist who is talked about in semi-religious terms in Japan. Ogawa Pro’s ‘awesome passion’ leaps from the page, and Nornes, who was there for part of the story, makes us feel as if we are there too. It’s easy to imagine this book changing the lives of Anglophone film-makers.” —Sight & Sound Abé Mark Nornes is associate professor of screen arts and cultures and Asian languages and cultures at the University of Michigan. He is a coordinator at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival and the author of Japanese Documentary Film: The Meiji Era through Hiroshima and Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema. 288 pages | 50 halftones | 7 x 10 | 2007 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements 1. Ogawa as Postwar Documentarist Postscript
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$25.00 Paper