Kashima Paradise
Benie Deswarte and Yann Le Masson, 1973, 107 min

Kashima Paradise was developed as part of a sociological analysis of rural and industrial Japan by Bénie Deswarte, who co-directed the film with Yann Le Masson. The project aimed to combine a theoretical field research and thesis on the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in capitalism and modernisation in 1970s Japan with a filmed document of people's lives, testimonies and fierce resistance. It examines the economic and environmental effects on an agricultural community of a new giant industrial complex in Kashima and highlights the struggle of farmers, students and workers in Sanrizuka against the construction of the Narita International Airport. Kashima Paradise was one of the films that brought the resistance movement of the Sanrizuka farmers to the attention of Western audiences and was widely distributed and discussed in the 1970s. In a letter to Le Masson in 1975, Chris Marker, who wrote the film's text and for whom the Sanrizuka struggle played an essential role, said about the film: "As we know, the symbol of cinema's magical privilege is often the 'time-lapse flower', this intrusion of another time into the familiar. This may be the first film in which history is filmed like a flower".

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Showing as part of Open City Documentary Festival