Yesterday, May 13, The Man Died, the 105-minutess feature film inspired by the ‘Prison notes’ of the Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, was screened at the Lincoln Centre, New York, as part of the 32nd African Film Festival New York, holding from May 7 through May 29.
The Man Died was screened at 6.00pm, and it attracted a diverse cadre of audiences beyond the festival guests and patrons. There was a large turnout of audiences from the Nigerian and African communities, as well as from New York University, NYU, the home-base of the director, Awam Amkpa, a professor of Cultural Aesthetics.
Co-presented with Film at Lincoln Center (FLC – May 7 – 13), the festival events will also hold at Maysles Cinema (May 15 – 18), and Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM – May 23 – May 29), the AFFNY, sometimes also called New York African Film Festival, NYAFF, founded by the renowned film worker and activist, Mahen Banneti, is reputed as one of the most important outlets for exposition of stories from Africa in North America.
In an invitation letter extended to the producer of the film, Femi Odugbemi, Bonetti, who doubles as Executive Director of the AFFFNY, stated: “This year, the flagship festival is presented under the banner, Fluid Horizons: A Hopeful Lens of a Shifting World, honoring the resilience of African youth and the forbearers that paved the way.”
She continued, “Since 1993, NYAFF and its collaborators have presented this festival, using cinema as a tool to bring African culture, history, and politics to thousands of viewers in the United States.”
Bonetti added: “For this 32nd edition of NYAFF, we have curated a grand selection of screenings, talks, exhibitions and panels, as well as African music, celebrating veteran and emerging filmmakers/artists from Africa and the diaspora.
The invitation also extends to the director of the film, Awam Amkpa, to give a masterclass on “the art of adaptation, exploring how iconic literary works are reimagined for the screen.”
Professor Amkpa’s session saw him using The Man Died – one of the very few of its kind from Nigeria, to “examine the creative choices, challenges, and cultural resonances involved in translating text to film.”
Also to feature Angèle Diabang, and her film, So Long a Letter, adaptation of Mariama Bâ’s feminist classic explores a woman’s defiance in the face of betrayal, the synopsis of the masterclass, states.
“From personal insight to process, this dialogue celebrates the enduring relationship between literature and cinema, and the new worlds that emerge when they meet.)—the session will examine the creative choices, challenges, and cultural resonances of translating text to film.”
Written by a notable Nigerian script/screenwriter, Bode Asiyanbi, based in the United Kingdom, The Man Died, which, aside from the 105-minute version, is also available as a 124-minutes (for academic exposition), stars a coterie of renowned names on the Nigerian screen, including Wale Ojo as Wole, Sam Dede as Yisa, Norbert Young (Prison Superintendent), Francis Onwochei (Prison Controller) and Edmond Enaibe as Commissioner; as well as international actors, London-UK-based Christiana Oshunniyi (Laide Soyinka), and Los Angeles, USA-based Abraham Awam-Amkpa (Johnson), among others.
Produced by Zuri 24 Media, The Man Died, according to the synopsis on its website — www.themandiedmovie.com — 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 own 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.
Since release in July 2024 to mark the 90th birthday anniversary of the poet, dramatist, essayist, memoirist, polemicist and “global humanist”, the film has been doing well in global film circuits, as well as at educational circuits. It has been chosen as a star attraction at the upcoming African Theatre Association, AfTA annual conference holding in Stuttgart, Germany in July. It is also being considered for special screenings at educational institutions in Florence, Italy; Abu Dhabi in the UAE; at New York University, Harvard University, and at Ithaca College, all in the USA; at Oxford University, in the United Kingdom; as well as at the House of World Culture in Berlin, Germany, among others. This is as it is also being reviewed by at least three major global streaming platforms, and international distribution channels.
The director of the film, an actor, playwright, director of stage plays, films and curator of visual arts, Awam Amkpa is a Nigerian-American professor of drama, film, and social and cultural analysis at the New York University in New York and Abu Dhabi. Author of Theatre and Postcolonial Desires (Routledge, 2003), Awam is director of film documentaries and curator of photographic exhibitions and film festivals. He has also written several articles on representations in Africa and its diasporas, representations, and modernisms in theater, postcolonial theater, and Black Atlantic films.
