Festival of Forgotten Films is the very appropriate title for the Didi Cheeka curated event at the Nigeria Film Corporation Cineplex, on Obalende Road, Ikoyi Lagos.
The venue will also play host to the “new and improved” Lagos International Film Festival between November 11th and 14th with the theme “New Normal: Disrupting the Disruption.”
It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see movies like Bullfrog in the Sun (combination of Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God), Kongis’s Harvest, Countdown at Kusini and other classics. Oladele being sensitive to the recent civil war avoided the original title. Some foreign versions of the film retained the title Things Fall Apart.
Oladele is the true “Father of Nigerian Film.” The New York-trained photographer was the former head of the film unit at Western Nigeria n Television ( WNTV) Ibadan. He incorporated the first indigenous film production company CalPenNy Nig.Ltd. in 1965 after resigning from WNTV. He produced (with Ola Balogun) the first Nigerian feature film Kongi’s Harvest (1970 ) directed by American Ossie Davis, a close associate of American Civil Rights activist Malcom X.
It was an adaptation of Wole Soyinka’s book of the same title. Oladele followed up with Bullfrog… in 1971.
The civil war had just ended so it was not expedient to film in the South East according to the Assistant Director Pa Tunde Adeniji. The movie had an international cast and crew like his previous movie.The movie cost about £400,000. That would make it close to N250m at today’s exchange rate.
Taking into consideration today’s best practices like Life /Accident Insurance for the foreign cast and crew, the cost would be closer to N300,000m.
How was he able to attract that kind of investment to a country devastated by civil war ?
“He was a man of great character and integrity” . Pa Tunde Adeniji came to the rescue again when I asked that question.
“He was also very highly connected …. His wife was the sister to an American Mayor. “ Madam Iyabo Aboaba, the General Manager of Freedom Park in Lagos who acted in the film quipped, Hmmm. Character (one of the five Cs of Credit Risk Analysis), Networking…critical ingredient for business success. Contrary to popular opinion, the Nollywood pioneers had a great deal of respect for the post-independence filmmakers. As initiator and co-founder of the Directors Guild of Nigeria (DGN), we populated the Board of Trustees of the guild with these pioneers including the late Ambassador Segun Olusola, late Chief Eddie Ugboma, Francis Oladele, Ola Balogun and so on.
The industry continues to moan about the lack of funding yet a 44-year-old man raised close to N250m about 51 years ago to make a film. Former Managing Director of Nigerian Film Corporation and a Filmmaker, Afolabi Adesanya and his brother floated a Debenture Stock on the floor of Nigerian Stock Exchange to raise funding for Ose Sango (1989).
How do we make the film industry “bankable” once more? A panel of experts will unlock these secrets from November 11th to 14th at the Lagos International Film Festival.
