Raising Silkworms, shot in 8mm, was made when the Ogawa Productions group (whose work was presented at Courtisane festival 2017 and at Cinematek in 2019) was invited to settle in Magino, a village in the mountainous region of Yamagata in northern Japan. They moved into a barn lent by a farmer-poet which they converted into a home and film studio. Their first film there was made under the direction of Shiraishi Yoko, Ogawa Shinsuke’s wife, and draws us into the world of raising silkworms under guidance of Sato Kimura, a woman who has spent half her life with the silkworms. 

“The film was originally meant to be a loose collection of visual notes on 8mm, a moving image supplement to their elaborate scrapbooks. Along the way, they could train members to operate the camera and learn other aspects of film production. However, Ogawa thought the footage was good enough to convert into a documentary. They edited the footage together, blew it up to 16mm, and it eventually became what they refer to as the Magino Village Story’s Silkworm Chapter, or Yosan-hen. Silkworms entered the village economy in Magino as late as the 1950s; however, the filmmakers mostly ignore the economic materiality of silkworm farming for process. Silkworm farming was primarily women’s work. The men would only occasionally lend a hand, which is why their film prominently features Ogawa’s wife, Shiraishi Yoko, as she learns the ins and outs of silkworms from neighbor Hatsu Kimura. The film describes every step of the process.” (Markus Nornes)