Swimming prohibited

Oki Hiroyuki is at present the rising star of Japanese experimental cinema. With Swimming is Prohibited and Tarch Trip (see elsewhere in the catalogue) the Rotterdam Film Festival presents his two most important films – and in the case of Tarch Trip his latest too.The films of Oki are extremely personal. They document his own life, his everyday activities, his moments of happiness and sorrow, his chance encounters and his love life. Oki is open about his homosexuality and that is still an act of great courage in Japanese culture. The English critic and programmer Tony Rayns, who introduced Oki internationally says of his discovery: ‘Not exactly avant-garde but far from mainstream, this is the real cutting edge of queer film-making’.Swimming is Prohibited is hardly affected by cutting; we see the pictures as they were captured shot by the camera. The film was made in a period of three weeks in the summer of 1989. It starts in a youth hostel somewhere in the mountains where Oki has a temporary job and continues in the outer suburbs of Osaka. A short silent film that Oki made in 1988 is included as a flashback in the film. (Oki makes short film impressions like this as well as his longer films, as short chapters in a continuing film diary).With The Hair Opera by Obitani Yuri, also being screened at the festival, Swimming is Prohibited is a powerful example of very personal Japanese cinema breaking sexually taboos.