Entitled or How Mom Shut Down Peckham

Last edited Sun Dec 2, 2018, 06:57 PM - Edit history (1)

Adeyemi Michael's tribute to his immigrant mom and I think to immigrant moms wanting the best for their children everywhere.

Adeyemi explains his film https://www.facebook.com/bbc/videos/561362541000355/

Transcript

Mothers can do anything. That was the first time my mum rode a horse in that film - she bossed it. They give birth, they build families, they build the world. All our mothers are queens and are leading the universe. It felt like a duty to me to celebrate the woman, the mother, the matriarch, the immigrant.

A large motivation for me doing the film was my mum being made redundant a few years back. She'd worked somewhere for 25 years and she was made to feel like she wasn’t enough. That really sort of knocked her confidence and I needed to do something to reinstate that and to reinstate her as who she actually is. It was important to have her dressed in traditional Yoruba wear. There is a very affirming nature about when we dress that way, looking at the colonial legacy and sort of relationship between the United Kingdom and Nigeria and subverting and flipping that position.

The horse's name is Beau. He's like an A-lister. I think he's been in Game of Thrones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Hercules, Peaky Blinders. The connection that Beau had with my mum and my mum had with Beau was nuts. That was the one thing I was worried about the most. I was having dreams like the night before like, literally, of catching my mum if she fell off the horse.

I love the place. I'm happy to say it's where I grew up. I’m happy to identify with that as a space and represent in that space. We came here 30-odd years ago from Nigeria. I was born there.

When you know where you belong it doesn't matter where you are in the world. When you know where you're from, when you know where your roots are, when you know what you stand for, when you know what your culture is you are enough.