Kyoto, My Mother’s Place

“The Director’s Place” is a series of films, commissioned by BBC Scotland in which directors of international reputation are invited to make a film about a place in their lives which is of significance to their work. This film opens up with an old photo of the director’s mother with fellow classmates. It’s in the 1920’s, they’re dressed in kimono and they’re celebrating their graduation in Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan. “I love this my mother” says Oshima “She looks happy and free.” He interviews his uncle and his mother’s friends to find out more about the life of a woman oppressed by social pressure and dominated by her own son who used her as a “nanny” for his children. It is also a meditation on his own life in Kyoto, and the history of Kyoto and Japan itself. As a baby he was presented to Matsuo, the god of Sake making and this spring his friends in Kyoto finally persuaded him to take part in the Matsuo festival. “Yes, let’s drink tonight ! I am forgetting my mother who has never drunk even a drop of Sake.”