Selma
and Ake|Two Realities, Thoughtful Overcomers.
In 1964, Dr Martin Luther King of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference [SCLC] accepts his Nobel Peace Prize. Four African-American girls
are shown walking down the stairs of the 16th Street Baptist Church, until an
explosion kills them.From the rolling stones of Abeokuta, south western part of
Nigeria is a very interesting story of a boy that later metamorphosed and
turned into a global reckoning through literature.
The film stars actors David Oyelowo as King, Tom
Wilkinson as President Lyndon B Johnson, Tim Roth as George Wallace, Carmen
Egogo as Coretta Scott King and rapper and actor, Common as Bevel.
In 1964, Dr Martin Luther King of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC] accepts his Nobel Peace Prize. Four
African-American girls are shown walking down the stairs of the 16th
Street Baptist Church, until an explosion kills them. The director of the film,
Ava DuVernay had to write new Martin Luther King adlib, due to copyright
infringement from Martin Luther King publishing estate. Yet, there was, well
told and projected into the realities of today’s America. In Selma, Ava
DuVernay proved to the world she is more than just a filmmaker, but history
maker that is full of authentic accounts.
Her zeal and commitment coupled with the rest of
the cast and crew made Selma, the most anticipated film of modern era. Ava
sweated, toiled but never screamed her brain off, rather, she was able to pull
through by encouraging others not to drop or stop. Even when pundits felt the
film was robbed of some of the most important awards, an opinion that went
viral and almost again torn America apart, in terms of the colours of the
academic judges, through that period, Ava remained a calm figure and played the
role of an American mother for everyone, “you win some, you lose some, but
spread the message. The awards would always come all the time.”
In Selma Alabama, Annie Lee Cooper, attempt to
register to vote, but is prevented by the white registrars.
King meets president Johnson asking for federal
legislation to allow black citizens to register to vote unencumbered. Johnson
says he has more important projects.
One thing about Selma is the apt timing of his
release. America has been going through racial upheavals in the last two years
and the racial rights turned into vociferous confrontations with the killings
of African-Americans by police that are supposedly whites, though, most times,
lay claims to self-defense.
The film eventually won Best Picture, Best
Original Song for film done by Rapper and activist Common and John Legend at
the 2015 Oscars Awards in Los Angeles. Selma has proved more than success with
the box office gross income records. Maybe award for the best actor and
director respectively may have eluded the film, the reality has been
established and the message behind the story will continue to go from one
generation to the next about some group of people who defile all odds and damn
the consequence of the law to fight for their rights which could only be
achieved while still alive.
The politics of producing the film also reared
its ugly head when production eggheads found it difficult to agree on the
production director. The director only had half a dozen of film credits mostly
documentaries and more of a marketing executive in the film industry, but the Sundance
film best documentary film winner Ava DuVernay remain unperturbed, as she knew
this was her chance. She wasoffered a budget up to 20million dollars and Selma
saw the light. She was able to overcome the power play of top film executives
on the film.
The film achieved what propaganda sponsored
films couldn’t achieve by opening America’s eyes to the true story about
America. It has also been able to reawake every race, colour or religion of
their socio-political responsibilities to America.
From the rolling stones of Abeokuta, south
western part of Nigeria is a very interesting story of a boy that later
metamorphosed and turned into a global reckoning through literature. The story of Ake is one of the childhood
stories that replete Africa and Africans, yet, still don’t get to the public
space, due to lack of proper documentation of our people, heroes, leaders,
icons and many more. Cultural policies have always been adduced as the cause of
the lack of respect for one another.
DapoAdeniyi, a Nigerian born journalist, writer,
publisher and filmmaker has given the world everything about the thespian who
is a colossus in the literary world. “Professor Wole Soyinka has been a
familiar father to me way back” the founder of Position magazine, a quarterly publication
that celebrates the contemporary arts in Africa explains.
A walk through the one storey building that houses
DapoAdeniyi and his Production Company has its walls decorated with many of
Wole Soyinka’s unseen pictures and archives. What closeness! One seems to ask?
The idea
for this film originally started in 1988, after the much celebrated adaptation
of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in 1986. The national television wanted to
celebrate Kongi, as he is popularly known, owning to the fact that he had just
won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In DapoAdeniyi’s words,“the laureate was
asked to choose his writer and he recommended me to handle the story. This I did
without hesitating on the project, but due to the bureaucratic bottlenecks in
the system at that time, the adaption couldn’t see the light of the day.”
The writer and publisher who is also a Prince
Claus Fund recipient, had gone ahead to release a critical acclaimed
documentary on Wole Soyinka entitled ‘Time Voyager’, exposing the activism and
public commentaries and muse of the acclaimed playwright who is known as a
public intellectual.
The trailer of the epic production of Ake, the
film adaptation of the world-famous childhood memoir by Wole Soyinka, the first
Black winner of the Nobel Prize for literature with the same title has finally
been released and has gone viral on social media with criticisms as expected
coming so fast.
The film fulfills many of its pre-production promises,
of producing a film that stands up to the quality and global status of the
original book, with which the film now stands as a companion piece.
Set in the late 1930s up to the middle of the
1940s when World War II ended, the film captures the period very well by taking
us right back in time. The usual elements that illustrate this period include
the “set props” among which are the period’s automobiles and locomotive railway
services as well as the defining coastal architecture and other forms of visual
design.
“We couldn’t see the original house of the
Soyinkas’ as it was long gone, revealed DapoAdeniyi.But the Nobel Laureate was
able to show us where the house was situated and we decided to do the
production recce for a location.”
Contemporary Afro- pop musician, Yinka Davies
comes across as the stalwart figure of the historical Mrs. Ransome-Kuti, the
leader of the Egba-Yoruba women’s riots of 1945 that stood up against poll
taxation on women and eventually routed the powerful Yoruba monarch, the Alake
of Egbaland.
Wole Soyinka is a descendant of the vocal,
powerful Yoruba elite, scions of early recipients of British education
dispensed by institutions administered by the Church Missionary Service (the
CMS). Intellectual and educational privilege empowered the local Egba elite to
rise up, mobilizing both the peasant and educated classes across the genders,
against the right-wing aristocracy which amassed both commercial and political
power and functioned as an oppressive instrument that was actively assisted by
the colonial establishment.
Mrs. Ransome-Kuti who led the rebellion was both
the aunt of the writer/ activist. She was also the mother of the late pop-music
star FelaKuti, whose music continues in a similar fashion of activist engagement.
It is gladdening to find that Mrs. Kuti’s
granddaughter and Fela’s own elder daughter (a musician and a choreographer in
her own right) YeniAnikulapo-Kuti, stars in the movie, donning the costumes and
the character of Mrs. Odufuwa, the pretty and fashionable wife of Wole’s uncle
whom the young Wole dreamed would be his own future wife!
Other prominent acts in the film are JimiSolanke,
the well-known actor and longstanding friend/ associate of Soyinka. Solanke, as
Pa Adatan, brings much gravitas to the production in the style of his
performances in Wole Soyinka’s stage productions over the years.
Mrs. TaiwoAjai-Lycett, OON, . a British trained
actress with commendable appearances in the 1970s ‘Hanging with Mr. Cooper’ one
of Britain’s acclaimed comedy television series, features as the very outspoken
Egba woman leader who leads the march on the Alake’s palace across the streets
of Abeokuta and also delivers the volcanic speech denouncing all forms of
taxation on the Egba womanhood.
Chief Festus AdegboyeOnigbinde, former National
Coach of Nigeria’s Super Eagles, play as the grandfather of Fela, Rev. J. J.
Ransome-Kuti, who roars back to life in Wild Christian’s moonlight tale, which
is well told by no less than LanikeOnimisi-Bennett, who plays the part of
Wole’s mother.
Other major appearances are ToyinAbiodun (Rev
I.O RansomeKuti), GbengaAjiboye (Essay, Father of Wole), Wale Adebayo (Spirit
man; he also took the lead role in a former epic screenplay “Sango” produced by
Femi Lasode under the aegis of the Even Ezra Studios), Hafiz Oyetoro (with the
outstanding comic part of “Myself” or “Mr. Latinwo”). YemiSolade (Broda Pupa)
and BayoBankole (familiar from the television sitcom Papa Ajasco).Bankole plays
the role of the recalcitrant student of Abeokuta Grammar School (AGS) who leads
the conspiracy to steal a fowl belonging to Mrs. Ransome-Kuti.
The children of Ake are perhaps the production’s
greatest boon. All the child-actors playing Wole at different age-grades bear
very fascinating and pleasant resonances of the actual Wole. Their grasp of
lines is crispy and very convincing.
The film’s director, DapoAdeniyi, says ample
care is taken to show that Wole grew out of a very enlightened home background
but clearly with no claim to wealth. That is the reason why the set of the
Soyinka home and that of the school at the St. Peter’s primary school, Ake,
where his father was the headmaster, are not extravagant but simple and
intense. This view, he says, is complemented by actual photographs of Wole
Soyinka’s early life and of his close relatives. Besides, the lesson the
director wants to pass across is that anyone can rise to significance,
regardless of how humble their background may have been.
Even from the trailer, there is evidence of the
biased portrayal of period architecture, particularly townhouses influenced by
the Brazilian masonry that swept the Southern Nigerian coastline following the
abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.
DapoAdeniyi was asked if the Professor has seen
the works and what were his comments, DapoAdeniyi opened up, “yes he has seen the
film, but he warned us not to ask for his comments.”
IrehoAito
Pictures/Backpage productions
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