Satō Makoto discovered documentary film when he visited Minamata (well known as the former site of an environmental disaster) as a student, and worked on Katori Naotaka’s The Innocent Sea. While touring Japan with the film, he met people who lived by the polluted Agano River in Niigata and decided to make a film about them. Living there with seven crew members for three years, Living on the River Agano was completed in 1992 and showed people who live with the river and work in agriculture and fishing, quietly probing the cruelty of nature destroyed. Ten years later, and after attending several funerals of people who appeared in the first feature, the team returned to the area. The resulting film Memories of Agano is a ghostly poem on people, fields, stories, songs and buildings receding into absence, the power of images and the strength of sound to revive the past.

新潟県に流れる阿賀野川のほとりに暮らす人々を3年間に渡って撮影した、『阿賀に生きる』から10年、映画に登場した愛すべき人々の多くはこの世を去ってしまった。今は荒れ果ててしまった田んぼや、主を失った囲炉裏などにキャメラを向け、人々が残した痕跡に10年前の映画作りの記憶を重ねていく。その一方で、荒れた田畑の上にスクリーンを張り。そこに『阿賀に生きる』の一場面や未公開シーンを映し出すといった実験的な手法も取り入れる。夜空に映し出される人々の笑い声。焼いた魚も泳ぎだす、こら、絵に描いたダルマさんも歩き出す、トロッコ、バッタン。どこからともなく「土方杭夫のうた」が……。人々と土地をめぐる記憶と痕跡に、『阿賀に生きる』という映画の記憶が交差し、過去と現在を繊細かつ大胆に見つめた詩的ドキュメンタリー。