Sanrizuka 3: The March of The Earth

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The Spring of the Great Offensive (大義の春 – Narita: Le printemps de la grande offensive)
Association for Solidarity with the Kansai Sanrizuka Struggle (dir. Koyama Osahito, French version by ISKRA) | 1978 | Japan | 30’ | Digital | French spoken, English subtitles

The Spring of the Great Offensive, shown here in its French version, is a militant Super 8 film made by the Association for Solidarity with the Kansai Sanrizuka Struggle, and directed by Koyama Osahiko, which focuses on the occupation of the airport control tower and the history of the 13-year Sanrizuka struggle, highlighting solidarity between political and social movements.
Fukuda’s The March of the Earth (1981), part of his four Sanrizuka Notes shot on 8mm, offers a different perspective on the conflict, from the young farmer’s point of view. A former member of Ogawa Productions, Fukuda remained in Sanrizuka after the collective left, where he continued to film and participate in the struggle. Last year at the festival we screened another of the Sanrizuka Notes, A Grasscutter’s Tale, a portrait of an 82-year-old woman who stayed in Sanrizuka to cultivate a small patch of land earmarked for the second phase of construction of Narita Airport. The March of the Earth portrays Sanrizuka’s resistance through the peasants’ everyday lives, focusing on agrarian issues in their ongoing struggle. It shows how the government tried to weaken the opposition by offering agricultural subsidies, which were rejected by the Youth Action Brigade, who instead took on the work themselves. In the film, one farmer says: “The real struggle begins now”.

With an introduction by Aikawa Yoichi and Ricardo Matos Cabo.

(Image courtesy of Hatano Yukie / Fukuda Katsuhiko)

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