Kenneth Okonkwo, Andy Okeke, Living in Bondage, and the Sequel

Accelerate TV: The Whole Truth

Celebrating Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

CxPStudio

Of Nollywood, Actors, and Paucity of Acting

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) - Every man has his own vanity. … If I were to choose between the story and the prose of a good book, I’d choose the latter—the juice. With movies, I’d choose the acting over the story. Good acting is when you cannot tell the actor apart from the character; when acting is so real as if a secret camera were hidden to catch regular people leading their normal lives—like when you watch “24” and wonder if those guys were actors, or real CTU agents doing their thing and getting filmed.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind—a memoir, now a film. Chiwetel Ejiofor is Trywell Kamkwamba, the Malawian father whose teenage son, William Kamkwamba, exploited the wind and generated electricity, solving drought and famine. A father who, though initially, even fiercely reluctant, finally gave his only bicycle to be cannibalized for a schoolboy’s dream.

             Ejiofor is a poor farmer and there’s no single doubt about it: his energy, looks, emotions. So dissolved into his character is he that, at first, I fail to recognize him. His home, the village, the people—nothing seems like it’s a movie. His wife, Agnes—played by the popular Senegalese actress, Aïssa Maïga—looks, in every detail, the image you know about that kind of woman in your village.

Of Lionheart, Oscars Disqualification, and National Identity Crisis

(By Daniel Chukwuemeka) – The disqualification of Genevieve Nnaji's Lion Heart from Oscar's Best International Film Award category is a very controversial topic. It'll certainly attract the usual discourse about colonialism and debate around nationalism and identity. In all, however, I think that Americans are indirectly telling us, "go home, Nigerians, and resolve your identity crisis. Go home and think, and act."

English is our official language, but if you watched Lion Heart, did you see the part where Pete Edochie is fuming before his prospective Hausa in-law? The Hausa man mutters some words in Hausa without knowing that Pete Edochie understands the language. Pete joins him in Hausa and speaks it away at the amazement and excitement of the Hausa man. That alone seals both their business and family connections.

             I said it in a post yesterday. We had work to do, but failed to do it. Noah Webster jnr. woke up one morning and said that God came to him in a dream and ordered him to write a dictionary of American English.

Of Harriet, Black Women, and Sexism

(By Kellie Carter-Jackson) – So I feel compelled to say a few things about these “Harriet” naysayers...many of whom have not seen the film. First, there was the controversy about Cynthia Erivo. She's black y'all! They didn't ask Scarlet Johansen to play her! Second, her comments about black Americans...c’mon. Don't act y'all don't hear the same ish from black Americans… ever have a meaningful conversation with a black conservative? Same thing. Third, this whole thing about a black slave catcher being the villain... Yes, historically, there were black slave catchers. They were used to win fugitives trust and then betray them for coin. There will ALWAYS be hired hands and mercenaries. Period. Fourth, clearly the greatest villain is slavery. Harriet was combating SLAVERY!!! Perhaps, the film assumes you know this. 

          If you're first impulse in a film about Harriet is to complain about how black men are portrayed, that's a problem. It’s like black women can’t shine without making sure that first no harm was caused to a black man. Folks, complained the black bounty hunter was too violent…really?? MORE VIOLENT than slavery????

Faux Historians and Nigeria's Need for Humanities

Adelakun

(By Abimbola Adelakun) - Fani-Kayode And His History Teachers 

If by now, faux historian and professional agitator, Femi Fani-Kayode, has not responded to the rejoinders of Professors Banji Akintoye and Farooq Kperogi on his Yoruba identity flippancy, we can conclude he has nothing further to say and move on to drawing some lessons from the brouhaha of “Yoruba” and its etymology. In some ways, Fani-Kayode’s attention-seeking ways represent the flawed ethics of the present milieu. We live in a post-truth world; the traditional structures that regulated popular inanities have broken down and given way to the reign of alternative facts.

There are two lessons that I took away from the Yoruba/Yariba episode. First is the role that the media played in helping Fani-Kayode brew his pot of mischief. There was no other apparent motive about his claim that the Fulani bequeathed the Yoruba their name other than troublemaking, and it fits into a larger pattern of his anti-Fulani sentiments. He did not cite any source for his discovery, and the way the more astute scholars dislodged his argument shows that there was no rigour invested in his ideas before he hit the streets. He just wanted to arouse the ethnic chauvinists permanently resident on social media as he is wont to do. Judging by how tribal irredentists crawled out of the woodwork to feast on his historical dabble, he pretty much succeeded.

Of Grandmothers, Culinary Magic, and Nostalgia

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) – Grandmother hated maggi, no, “mmagi”, her term for all English condiments, which she said were invented to rig the cooking process. Yet she had her own cooking secrets: ogbamkpo and nwaurubiri, two types of dry fish without which she made no soup. Only the bones were laid to waste. The heads and skin, she would pound; and send the grain into the boiling pot to literally fish out incredible taste. 

The main fish, now rid of all bottlenecks, then plunges into the soup, filling it with true blessing. No meat or fresh fish approximates to the supremacy of nwaurubiri, Grandmother’s wise culinary vote. 

I once searched in Lagos for the pair—nwaurubiri and ogbamkpo—in my bid to restore the dignity of oha. Only twice did I find them. Ruined by urban touch, the Lagos ogbamkpo tastes like the bark of a tree. I eat the authentic one only when I visit the village. 

          Two more items sometimes helped work Grandmother’s culinary magic: otukwuru and onyenenkete, in my view the tastiest mushrooms on earth. I do not know the English names of these species, nor do I particularly care. 

Of Women, Change, and the Industrial Revolution

"The domestic function of the preindustrial woman had not needed ideological justification; it was implicit in the biological and political economy of her world. Someone had to keep the spinning wheel turning and the open-hearth fire constantly tended, and the nursing mother who could not leave her infant was the obvious candidate. In the domesticity of the preindustrial woman there was no sharp disjunction between ideology and practice. But the Revolution was a watershed. It created a public ideology of individual responsibility and virtue just before the industrial machinery began to free middle-class women from some of their unremitting toil and to propel lower-class women more fully into the public economy. The terms of domesticity were changed, and the pundits would not bring back the past."

Linda Kerber, 1980, 231

Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America

Adichie: Race, Identity, and Feminism

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Identity, Feminism and Honest Conversations

The Economist

Canal+ and Netflix Eye Nollywood Opportunities

(By Will McBain) – Canal+ and Netflix Eye Nollywood Opportunities

Increased foreign investment in the wake of the purchase of a Nollywood studio by Canal+ could be a game-changer for Nigeria’s already thriving film industry. Will McBain looks at the prospects for a sector targeted to make $1bn in export revenue by 2020.

Nollywood has begun the biggest financial makeover in its history with this summer’s acquisition of Lagos-based production house ROK film studios by French media giant Canal+.

The studio was bought from Africa’s largest subscription-based video-on-demand company IROKOtv, whose founder Jason Njoku called the sale the “largest media deal in West African history”. Actress and producer Mary Njoku – Jason Njoku’s wife – founded ROK studios and will stay on as director general under the Canal+ acquisition.

Chris Abani: Telling Stories from Africa

Chris Abani - TedTalk Global 2007

Telling Stories from Africa

Chris Abani: Of Chukwu, Priests, and Slavers

"Have you heard of the oracle of the Igbo?
The one called Chukwu? Just one word: God.
The oracle of God.
The voice of God.
The final arbitration.
Kpom kwem.
Deep in a grove of trees, the sacred lake,
and rising in the gloom and heat,
mist, the very breath of divinity.
The unbearable trepidation,
the worship, the sheer terror and earnestness
trembling the supplicants. And the priests
sitting on rocks and in trees on haunches,
silent like vultures or Rilke's unspeakable angels.
And then a pilgrim wades cautiously into the lake.
On the shore, the line of unannointed
shivers in a shared awe.
And if the petitioner is beautiful or strong,
the priests hold her under, then shackled,
for slavers. In the lake, red dye bubbles up
as God smacks his lips.
And that endless line of believers near faint
with the fearsome beauty of the thought:
Please consume me, God.
Consume me and find me worthy.
But don't let me die."

Chris Abani, 2010, 15

"Sacrement, 1," Sanctificum

In Need of Artistes and Intellectuals like Sofola

(By Sylvester Asoya) - “The Artist and the Tragedy of a Nation”

          On March 28, 1991, the late Professor ‘Zulu Sofola, Africa’s first female professor of Theatre Arts delivered one of the most reflective and scholarly inaugural lectures in Nigeria. Sofola, prolific playwright, astute administrator and scholar par excellence was at the time, head of the Department of Performing Arts, University of Ilorin. For those in the audience, the playwright’s superlative performance was not only outstanding, it was also record-breaking. 

          An inaugural lecture is an event of great importance in the life of every academic. It provides a rare opportunity for the newly elevated professor to inform his or her colleagues, the university community and the public of his or her research outcomes and plans for the future. Sofola, who had returned from her sabbatical leave in the United States two years earlier, used the occasion to speak, and eloquently too, on the artiste and a nation on the edge. 

          In 1991, Nigeria’s tragedy was not close to home. For instance, the chaos in public universities today was only incubating and hope was not a scarce commodity. Apart from the fact that there were a good number of Nigerians with discretionary incomes in the middle class, prices of goods and services had not hit the roof, despite Ibrahim Babangida’s voodoo economics. Today, ignorance, hopelessness, ineptitude and disillusionment reign supreme and nothing is being done to reduce poverty, promote inclusive growth or engender hope.

Reinventing Enterprise in Igbo Land

NKATA UMU IBE | MARCH 2019

Centre for Memories: Ncheta Ndigbo
Topic: 'Mkpuru Onye Kuru'
Reinventing Enterprise n' Ala Igbo. Speaker: Ike Chioke (Group Managing Director, AFRINVEST)

In Memoriam: John Samuel Mbiti

John Samuel Mbiti (1931 - 2019)
-Theologian, Philosopher, Priest,
-Professor of African Religions
-Author of (among many others) African Religions and Philosophy (1969)