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Narita: The Peasants of the Second Fortress

"Narita: The Peasants of the Second Fortress" (1971) chronicles a decisive phase in the struggle against the construction of the Narita International Airport, as farmers in Sanrizuka adopted new defensive tactics, including the construction of fortified towers and underground shelters. As police forces moved to dismantle these structures, confrontations intensified. The film combines scenes of direct conflict with extended conversations between Ogawa and the farmers, documenting both the physical resistance and the sustained community organizing that defined this stage of the protest.

Narita: The Peasants of the Second Fortress

6.0 1971
The Steam Express

The unique editing of the film, in which cuts of the train running according to an unreadable sequence of rules are overlaid with radio weather forecasts, '60s pop music and FEN broadcasts, and the inexhaustible camerawork and fearless cutting bring the scenery seen through the train windows to life in this ambitious film. This groundbreaking work was an independent film at the time, but was released in a hall rented by the filmmaker and drew an unprecedented audience. This is the starting point for his posthumous film Bokutachi Kyuko A-Train de Ikirou!

The Steam Express

NR 1976
The Feast of the Gods on a Winter’s Night: Toyama’s Shimotsuki Festival

The shimotsuki festival has been passed down over the centuries in the community of Shimoguri, located in Kamimura in Nagano Prefecture’s Shimoina District. The population once staged a revolt against the oppression of the Toyama clan who governed the region. Disease spread in the aftermath and was thought to be the work of the slain clan. The festival was initiated to clear their resentment. The masks of dead spirits dance amid clouds of steam from boiling water.

The Feast of the Gods on a Winter’s Night: Toyama’s Shimotsuki Festival

NR 1970
Situation

A static image of a rock next to a curb is overlaid with the deformed reflection of light and shadows from pedestrian and vehicular traffic. An alternatively whispy and shrill, irregular slide whistle soundtrack is occasionally punctuated by a male voice saying "this is," culminating in an insistent string of "this is, this is, this is." Once the soundtrack falls silent, the camera begins to haltingly zoom out, revealing the reflection to have been caused by the slick surface of the glossy photo of the curb, and the picture itself to have been one of a series of photos of urban details placed in a grid in an exhibition space.

Situation

NR 1974
The Extinction of Landscape

This animated documentary is derived from footage shot at the site of the Sanrizuka struggle opposing the construction of Narita Airport. In addition to scenes evidently shot before and after the Nihon Genyasai Festival in Sanrizuka, it features time-lapse sequences showing abandoned houses and construction equipment leveling requisitioned land. “The footage was filmed in Narita. Because this land had been seized, I became conscious of the intensity of my own inner landscape. My time-lapse filming of the landscape was intended for use in an animation-as-documentary.”

The Extinction of Landscape

6.0 1971
Murder Catalogue

Matsumoto's early video work Murder Catalogue, but there were few opportunities to be screened at that time since it dealt with a grotesque image. Digitized a half-inch videotape he had kept in his studio. It is a work that shows the original form of a mysterious narrative that later appears well in Matsumoto's work, as it is constructed to repeat an event through long-term filming of a video and monologues by a cassette tape recorder. A photograph is placed in front of the video camera by one by one and the camera zooms in mechanically towards the images. Also, in Matsumoto's voice, a short monologue about the photos recorded on the tape is played. However, the voice is suddenly cut off by the sounds of hitting and the screams of the terminal, followed by the camera starting to expand the different images in the same way, and the voice of the recorder is played over and over again. - Ex-Is

Murder Catalogue

6.0 1975