THE Man Died, the feature film inspired by Nobel laureate Professor Wole Soyinka’s prison notes, is continuing its run of global festival circuits.
The movie specially premiered on July 12 at the Alliance Francaise, Michael Adenuga Centre in Ikoyi, Lagos, to symbolically mark Prof Soyinka’s 90th birthday and was also screened at the Africa Centre, London, that same month.
It was screened on October 5 at the Quramo Festival of Words in Lagos and on October 11 in Accra, Ghana. The well-attended Ghana screening was on the ‘Accra Streamfest’ bill of the “Labone Dialogues 2.0,” hosted by New York University (NYU), Accra.
With the theme ‘Moving Images: Into the 21st Century’, the Accra screening featured panel discussions with filmmakers, critics and industry leaders shaping African film’s future.
Key cast and crew members, including the director, Professor AwamAmkpa, producer Femi Odugbemi, and the lead cast, Wale Ojo (Wole Soyinka), had conversations with the audience after the screening.
The movie will return to London on October 27 when it is shown at the Film Africa Festival. Established in 2011, Film Africa is reportedly London’s biggest biennial festival celebrating the best African cinema from across the continent and diaspora organised by the Royal African Society.
Curator Keith Shiri, a respected cineaste and long-standing head of the African Movie Award Academy Awards (AMAA), explained that the Film Africa Festival “brings to diverse London and UK audiences a high-quality and wide-ranging film program accompanied by a vibrant series of events, including director Q&As, talks, and panel discussions, workshops and masterclasses.
After London, ‘The Man Died’ will return to Nigeria from November 27 to 30. It will be screened at the Eastern Nigeria International Film Festival (ENIFF) in Enugu as the opening film at the Viva Cinemas.
Festival director UjuakwuAkukwe disclosed that the event-themed ‘Reimagine’ will focus on “how storytelling can reshape narratives and social impact.” He added that the festival “is inspired by Eastern Nigeria’s long history with Nollywood and the African Storytelling industry… It is a competitive festival that provides a platform and programs for independent filmmakers, artists, and storytellers working in film and digital media. We screen films in all genres from around the world, and we give priority to female filmmakers.”
From Enugu, ‘The Man Died’ would land at the African International Film Festival, AFRIFF, from November 3 to 9.
The Foundation for the Promotion of Documentary Film in Africa, conveners of the iREPRESENT Documentary Film Forum and annual IREP International Documentary Film Festival, promotes the global tour of ‘The Man Died’.
According to the synopsis on its website, www.themandiedmovie.com, it is the story of “Wole Soyinka’s 27 months incarceration by the Nigerian government in 1967 at the cusp of the civil war. He was famously seeking a truce between Biafra and the Federal Government to allow time for a negotiated settlement of the conflict. It is fundamentally a personal account. Essentially, the subject found refuge from the brutality inflicted upon him by retreating into and living within his mind. At times, he drifted about the frontiers of madness, hanging on to himself by a thread. At other times, he pondered, listened, and watched like only the truly otherwise unoccupied can. Importantly, he managed to scrounge paper and a pencil from time to time and record his journey of ‘motionlessness.”
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