Kaori Oda
Kaori Oda, Recording with Mother ‘Working Hands’, 2025, 25 min
This May, we are thrilled to present four short works by contemporary filmmaker Kaori Oda.
Oda is perhaps best known internationally for the series of films exploring subterranean spaces and their cumulative histories, such as Aragane (2014), Cenote (2019) and most recently, Underground (2024). Our May program, curated by Julian Ross, traces the theme of family across four lesser-seen works by Oda, from 2010’s Thus a Noise Speaks to her newest work Recording with Mother: ‘Working Hands’ (2025). In these films, Oda’s trademark techniques of sonic and visual layering depict the home and family as a complex archive of memories and emotions.
Thus a Noise Speaks (2010) restages Oda’s own coming-out in her family home two weeks after the original event. Flash (2015) combines audio recordings from Japan with the view from a window on a train journey in Croatia, lending a nostalgic texture to a stretch of lived time. Karaoke Cafe BOSA (2020) invites the patrons of a karaoke kissaten where Oda’s mother worked to reflect on the state of the world during COVID, and Recording with Mother: ‘Working Hands’ (2025), depicts Oda’s mother going about her everyday tasks while relating a reverse chronology of her working life.
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Program
Kaori Oda, Thus a Noise Speaks, 2010, 38 min
A family dinner shifts from celebration to discomfort when director Kaori Oda reveals that she is a lesbian. But the dinner is a recreation of the real event two weeks after the fact and the director has re-staged it to force her family members to consider their responses and the dynamics at play.
Kaori Oda, Flash , 2015, 25 min
“In a train from Sarajevo to Zagreb, looking at the landscape of the foreign country from a window, I somehow felt nostalgic and a question crossed my mind. "What is my first memory?"
Could primitive memories be found and shared in human beings? If collective memories exist in us as what is inherited , I would like to know what it is like and capture them by camera and sound recorder.” (Kaori Oda)
Kaori Oda, Karaoke Cafe BOSA, 2022, 13 min
Karaoke Cafe BOSA is located in the suburbs of Osaka, Japan. It’s a place where elderly neighbors gather to chat and sing. Cafe BOSA leaves traces in these days of unrest as a time capsule of the Anthropocene.
Kaori Oda, Recording with Mother ‘Working Hands’, 2025, 25 min
“Since I started making films, I have filmed my mother from time to time.
My mother is the person closest to me because she is my “mother". However, when I am filming, I see a side of my mother that I did not know existed. I have learned that she is not only my mother but also a person who has lived her life.
My mother worked at a Karaoke Cafe for a few years. Due to the Corona disaster, the karaoke cafe closed before spring of this year, as the customers, many of whom were elderly to begin with, did not return. I made a short film, "Karaoke Cafe BOSA," with the help of my mother and some of the regulars, while she was still working in the aftermath of the Corona disaster. I was commissioned to make the film to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Goethe-Institute Tokyo, so I gave a simple interview to my mother and the regulars about what they wanted to leave behind for the next 60 years. Their answers were sincere and earnest, about the importance of everyday life and the desire for peace.
Shortly before I started making that small film, Russia had invaded Ukraine and the war had begun.
I would like to tell you about my mother's life, she was born as the second from the bottom of 10 siblings. Her father (grandfather to me) died when she was 5 years old, and because of the lack of financial resources, she went to work at a woolen factory in Aichi Prefecture at the age of 15 to finish high school. She graduated from high school while working. Later, while working part-time for her older brother in Kyoto, she became a certified telephone operator. She found a job as a telephone operator at a company in Osaka. However, She returned to her hometown, Takashima (Nagasaki Prefecture), when she heard that the local government office was looking for a telephone operator. At the age of 23, she had my older sister and married my father.
These days, Mom's daily life seems to consist of watching Chinese dramas on TV and going to karaoke classes to enjoy singing. She also attends gymnastics classes and digs a small Buddha out of pieces of wood. She sometimes talks about empty spaces near her apartment, hoping that one day she can open a karaoke cafe again. With fragments of my mother’s life which I do not know and her current daily life, I would like to make a small film with her.” (Kaori Oda)
Kaori Oda
Kaori Oda (小田香), born in Osaka (Japan), 1987. Filmmaker/Artist. Through images and sounds, Kaori Oda’s works explore the memories of human beings. Oda lived in Sarajevo for three years from 2013 and completed the Doctor of Liberal Arts in filmmaking under the supervision of Béla Tarr in 2016.
Oda’s first feature, Aragane (2015) shot in a Bosnian coal mine, had its World Premiere at Yamagata International Film Festival and received Special Mention. The second feature, Toward A Common Tenderness (2017) a poetic film research, had its World Premiere at DOK Leipzig and Cenote (2019) shot in underwater caves in Yucatan Mexico, was premiered in Bright Future section at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2020. The recent middle length film GAMA (2023) has been screened at MoMA Docfortnight, Cinéma du Réel and Festival du ciné-ma de Brive (Jury SFCC de la Critique). Oda received the Inaugural Nagisa Oshima Prize in 2020 and the new face award of Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts in 2021.
The latest feature, Underground (2024) that explores subterranean spaces in Japan, had its World Premiere at Tokyo International Film Festival and International Premiere at Forum section of Berlinale 2025.
小田香
1987年大阪府生まれ。フィルムメーカー/アーティスト。イメージと音を介して「人の記憶のありか」「人間とは何か」を探求する。
2013年、映画監督のタル・ベーラが陣頭指揮する若手映画作家育成プログラムであるfilm.factory (3年間の映画制作博士課程)に第1期生として参加し 、2016年に同プログラムを修了。
2014年度ポーラ美術振興財団在外研究員。ボスニアの炭鉱を主題とした第一長編作品『鉱 ARAGANE』(2015) が山形国際ドキュメンタリー映画祭・アジア千波万波部門にて特別賞を受賞。その後、リスボン国際ドキュメンタリー映画際、マル・デル・プラタ国際映画祭(アルゼンチン)、台湾国際ドキュメンタリー映画祭などを巡る。
2017年にエッセイ映画『あの優しさへ』が完成。ライプティヒ国際ドキュメンタリー&アニメーション映画祭ネクスト・マスターズ・コンペティション部門にてワールドプレミア上映。
2019年最新作長編『セノーテ』が完成。山形国際ドキュメンタリー映画祭、ロッテルダム国際映画祭などに招待され各国を巡回。
2020年、第1回大島渚賞を受賞。
2021年、『セノーテ』の成果により第71回芸術選奨文部科学大臣新人賞を受賞。
2023年、 最新中編『GAMA』(53分/2023)がMoMA Doc Fortnight、Cinéma du réel、Festival du cinéma de Brive(SFCC批評家賞)など国内外の映画祭で上映された。
2024年、最新長編『Underdround アンダーグラウンド』が完成。東京国際映画祭でワールドプレミア後、ベルリン国際映画祭フォーラム部門にて上映された。