Kyoto, My Mother's Place - by Nagisa Oshima (1991)

Commissioned by BBC Scotland, Kyoto, My Mother’s Place is a lovely, achingly personal portrait of Oshima’s mother and the world in which she came to live when she arrived in Kyoto as a young woman…

The Japanese feature film director Nagisa Ôshima gained world fame with his controversial sex film In the Realm of the Senses (1976) and the war film Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983). Neither film has much in common with this restrained documentary portrait of his mother and his native city Kyoto. Ôshima uses old photographs, classical paintings and contemporary film footage to explore the history of this former capital of Japan and its many temples, which escaped the worst of the Second World War and still form the religious centre. We also see Ôshima dressed in kimono wandering around the city, visiting locations that have been important to his city's history or his own personal history. This classical image contrasts sharply with Ôshima's explicitly acknowledged antipathy towards Kyoto, which he fled in order to be able to blossom as an individual artist. "I wanted to burn Kyoto," he elaborates. But still he must accept that he has been partially formed by the city. At the end of the documentary he joins a religious procession, connecting himself with Kyoto's history. But he is still struggling with the life Kyoto forced his mother into, with her role as attentive spouse, bound by the harness of conservative mores. He uses interviews and other techniques to bring this period to life.