Devotion, A Film about Ogawa Productions
Directed by Barbara Hammer.
US/Japan, 2000, video, color and b&w, 82 min.
US/Japan, 2000, video, color and b&w, 82 min.
In Devotion, Barbara Hammer provides a rare glimpse inside the revolutionary lifestyles and groundbreaking films of members of Ogawa Productions, an important Japanese postwar documentary collective that made significant works about social struggle and village life. Set within the framework of the global student movement of the New Left in the mid 1960s, Devotion presents in-depth stories from collective members, including directors Oshima Nagisa, Hara Kazuo, and Haneda Sumiko. Memory, history, national culture, gender, and identity all figure in the story of the evolution, development, and, finally, disintegration of this seminal film collective.