DEVOTION by Barbara Hammer PREMIERES AT MARGARET MEAD FEST

[A.M. Nornes]

>
> DEVOTION, A FILM ABOUT OGAWA PRODUCTIONS, 85 min., Video
> a new documentary by Barbara Hammer
> U.S. Premiere
> on
> Tuesday, Nov. 7 at 6:30
> (VOTE FIRST!)
> The Margaret Mead Film Festival
>
> @The Museum of Natural History
> enter on 77th  St. between Columbus Ave. & CPW
> Tickets: $9/ general
> $Students/Seniors: $8
>
> Following student unrest in late-1960's Japan, a small band of filmmakers
> retreated to the hinterland to create a new kind of cinema.   At the center
> of both the filmmaking and the attendant community was its enigmatic leader,
> Ogawa Shinsuke.  A man of great persuasive powers, Ogawa-san held his cadre
> together with words---often in the form of blistering critiques.   As one
> participant remembered, "We were all a bit inclined to interrogate each
> other."  Barbara Hammer gives rein to a panoply of characters in her
> reconstruction, at once attentive to details of material culture---raising a
> beautiful silkworm, or the life cycles of rice---and telling a chapter of
> social history that is both weighty and difficult,  a chronicle of a
> communitarian vision gone awry.
> ---Thor Anderson for Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley
>