“Extraordinarily valuable, illuminating, and even entertaining, Forest of Pressure brims with the types of information that only a key insider can get his hands on.” —Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, New
York University
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, Forest of Pressure explores the emergence of socially committed documentary filmmaking in postwar Japan. Analyzing Ogawa Pro’s films and works by other
Japanese filmmakers, Ab矇 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.
Ab矇 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 (Minnesota, 2003).
