Summer in Narita; Narita: Peasants of the Second Fortress; Narita: Heta Village

Mention the Japanese New Wave, and fictional features about youthful ennui and social unrest inevitably come to mind. Films such as Night and Fog in Japan, Fighting Elegy, The Pornographers or Throw Away Your Books, Let's Go Out Into the Streets are now seen as cultural milestones that vividly chronicled the drastic changes confronting Japanese society in the 1960s and early 70s.

Much less celebrated, however, are the documentaries that laid bare the schisms tearing at the country's social fabric during the same period - and it's here that Shinsuke Ogawa came in.

Having graduated from Kokugakuin University with an economics degree, Ogawa began his career making public relations films. He left the commercial arena to pursue what his heart had long desired - documentaries that would examine the devastation left in the wake of what was known as Japan's post-war economic miracle.

While Nagisa Oshima, Seijun Suzuki and Shohei Imamura came up with biting social critique through fantastical fiction, Ogawa chose an approach that he would later describe as 'peeking' into the problems of real life.

His magnum opus came about when he heard about farmers in Sanrizuka, near Tokyo, facing eviction from their land to make way for a new international airport project.

The first film of what would become the Narita series was made in 1968 and set the tone for the others to follow: recording the armed struggle between students defending the fields and the riot police trying to clear them (and the farmers) so as to allow construction work to begin.

Summer in Narita never feigns the pseudo-objectivity the mainstream media claim to uphold. It's partisan in support of the activists, and remains an eye-opening examination of that particular social movement.

In subsequent films Ogawa would gradually go beyond the confrontation and the politics to place more focus on the lives and tribulations of the farmers affected by the whole Narita programme.

Three Narita films are being screened at the Hong Kong Independent Film Festival.

Summer in Narita, Mon, 7.30pm; Narita: Peasants of the Second Fortress, Tue, 7.30pm; Narita: Heta Village, Wed, 7.30pm, agnes b. Cinema, HK Arts Centre