This year’s iREPRESENT International Documentary Film Festival is dedicated to Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka, who will be 90 in July.
WHEN the 2024 edition of the iREPRESENT International Documentary Film Festival opens on March 21, documentary movie lovers will have a good time over four days in two venues.
Over 45 films will be screened at the 14th edition of the film festival organised by the Foundation for Promotion of Documentary Film Festival in Africa (FPDFA).
Themed ‘Righting the Wrong,’ the festival will be held physically at two Lagos locations: Freedom Park, Lagos Island, and Alliance Francaise, Mike Adenuga Centre, Ikoyi, until the 24th.
The festival, some of whose activities will happen virtually, is dedicated to the Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, who will clock 90 years in July.
Explaining why the Nobel Laureate is being honoured with this edition of the festival founded in 2010, its Executive Director, Femi Odugbemi, said, “He embodies the virtues of the quintessential ‘citizen activist’ with the clarity of vision and passion for the betterment of our collective humanity needed to hold power accountable to the people.
“Over the past six decades and more, he has consistently deployed his intellectual acumen and personal resources to defend human values and the fundamentality of the freedom of the individual to resist oppression. He is renowned for having also displayed a high degree of patriotic zeal to clamour for good governance and participatory democracy by citizens of the country, even at grave risks to his comfort and career. Because of his tenacious hold on his convictions, he sometimes encountered problems with consecutive state authorities and certain sections of society. But he remains steadfast in his self-imposed battles to always right the wrongs he perceives in his social, cultural and political environments. These values and virtues iREP hopes to spotlight and celebrate at the 2024 festival to assure members of the social milieu that they can hold on to their beliefs and convictions without being herded by the mob.”
The two-day Soyinka festival component at the Alliance Francaise, Mike Adenuga Centre, will feature two keynote speeches. Writer, filmmaker, cultural theorist, scholar, art historian, and Professor of Comparative Literature and Film at New York University, Manthia Diawara, will deliver the first, ‘RIGHTING the FUTURE: Soyinka & His Engagements’ on the first day.
Global Network Professor of Drama, Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University, New York, Awam Amkpa, will give the second-day keynote on Soyinka’s humanistic ideals as reflected in his works. A panel discussion and screenings of films related to Soyinka’s career will follow each keynote.
The Inner City Screening (ICS): Documentary for the Underserved Communities project launched last year will also be held during this edition. Tagged ‘Documentary Film for the Underserved’, the project was conceived to spread documentary film ideas and content to communities that are not usually captured in the screening and consumption of media content. There will be a repeat at the four communities—Bariga, Ajegunle, Ikorodu, and Ejigbo—where selected films were screened in 2023 this year.
Overall, more than 45 movies from Nigerian filmmakers and their counterparts from 25 countries in four continents, who submitted their entries via Filmfreeway, will be screened at the 2024 Irep.
Per Odugbemi, some specially curated films that have made the round of international festival circuits and won awards globally will also be screened.
On ‘Righting The Future’ as the festival’s theme, Odugbemi said it was chosen “to instigate conversation between the present and the continent’s future, as well as encourage deeper dialogue between the young people and their elders. The provocative theme is set in the context of happenings in this season of political anomalies and leadership failures in many countries of the continent.”
