Even though Nigeria didn’t get much love at this year’s FESPACO film festival, some Parisian organizers believe that the francophone world has been ready for Naija cinema. Nollywood, the world’s second largest film industry, produces over 2000 films annually, and now, seven of its best will be screened at France’s first ever NollywoodWeek Paris (and […]
Here’s a short behind-the-scenes video piece for those who enjoyed Akin Omotoso’s well-received film “Man on Ground”. (We reviewed it here.) Snippets and anecdotes include those on: The Beginning / The Story / The Funding (crowd-funded initially) / The Shoot, The Cast, The Crew / “Trouble in Paradise” (or: when they feared the production would […]
‘Grand comme le Baobab’ (“Tall as the baobab tree”) is a film told through the voice of Coumba (in Pular language), who tries to avoid her 11-year-old sister from being sold into marriage to settle a family debt in rural Senegal; shot mostly with a local cast.
A recurring theme in director Akin Omotoso’s films is the fraught postapartheid relationship between Nigerian migrants and their South African hosts. Part of the reason is autobiographical: Akin is the son of Kole, the literary professor, who moved his young family, including his then teenage son, to South Africa in the early 1990s from Nigeria. […]
The London film world (and its media) have been turned to the 2012 Berlinale. As film critics and journalists flock to Germany for the annual festival, complaints about the Teutonic cold are routine, as are the proclamations heralding a new masterpiece of world cinema. This year’s programme featured a few interesting releases by African directors.
Yeh, not Siskel and Ebert. Actually updated. And in Africa.
Last month Johannesburg filmmaker Akin Omotoso, who directed a documentary about Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, flew to Lagos to attend the launch of Soyinka’s political party, The Democratic Front for a People’s Federation, and to relive some childhood memories:
