But one surprise package from the talented movie director is
that he has never been to the university, at least to study one course or the
other. Despite that, TK has been able to prove that one’s talent can stand him
out and he did not mince words in revealing some hidden truth about himself and
his job in this interview.
Tell us about your current project,
Dazzling Mirage, what informed it?
Dazzling Mirage is a project that I have been planning for almost two years
now. I was looking for a people set and I was doing a short film that was made
in London which
was targeted at the minority in England
but not until I came across Yinka Egbokare’s book that I said this is a good
story. Dazzling Mirage is a love story, but it has the theme of sickle
cell disease but it’s equally entertaining so I decided well it’s time we
discuss it. It is time because almost everyday I know how people suffered from
that disease and I had some personal experience and thought that there is no
enough perception or awareness about it because it can be preventable and it
only requires a test and once somebody is diagnosed that is suffering for life,
and there is no cure, so I thought yes, number one it’s about time we entertain
people with love story but the theme is also important.
From Oleku to Abeni
and Arugba, how did you come about the cast?
I do not consciously decided who
will be a cast in the film, it’s important for me to find a well developed
story and then we will respond to the demand of that particular story, so It
could happen, but I can’t give a guaranty, usually I don’t have an idea of who
will lead until the cast is ready.
What are the criteria?
The criteria sometimes, you may have
a good story and if you use a known face, then people are not going to see the
film, they will only be looking at the person, so sometimes we deliberately
don’t cast like that, and sometimes when you target and put a face, it drags
the story down and that I don’t think is good for story telling. We compromise
but what we do is we try to have a mixture of everybody, new people, people who
are established, people who are experienced in traditional drama and those who
are formally trained in the university, so we do a lot of combination and the
essence is that the character is so natural, we try to make it natural and I
thank that has worked.
So the story determines what happens
to the casting and if it is a repeated actor or actress that you have once
used?
Of course it’s the story that will
determine whether it will happen or not, I can’t tell, I can’t remember if it
has happened but definitely people who dwell with us sometimes join the cast,
it depends, even I can’t tell myself, I can’t say for sure that this is
what is going to happen until we cast them.
For Maami, there were several
talks about it because it is believed to be a story written about the
late MKO Abiola. How true is this?
Maami is just a story of a single parent, a mother bringing up a
son, it’s just a bond between mother and son. If it looks like Abiola story, it
looks like my story too because we all had more or less the same background,
the same no shoes, ‘kaaki’ uniforms, and we went to school, you know all those
mothers that tried everything possible, sell everything, fighting everything to
make sure we went to school, so that’s everybody story, not specifically
Abiola’s story.
What are the experiences of being a
part of the Asia Film Festival?
I have been a judge in one or two
festivals, but particularly I was excited to be part of the edition of the
festival and being a young person, I was really impressed about the standard of
the festival itself which at ground looks like it was older than that, that it
has been going on for a long time, you know in terms of the quality of the
participation of the film, the facilities and everything was unbelievable.
Being a judge, for me, it’s like a preparation for and against my next project
because when I am among great film makers, we watch about 23 to 28 films in one
week, so its morning, afternoon, every time, it’s just about films and you
probably get back at midnight, but at least you have seen pure films in a day
for free but suddenly here you are with the best of films in the world and it
is the best condition that you can watch a film not available in Nigeria. You
see, you learn from all this films, it’s like refueling your own creative
background, in decoration and at a plan, you can get what world global cinema
looks like and it can determine what your film will be. So there are what I
take away from there and then the fact that in Nigeria we still have a long way
to go because we don’t have the cinemas, we don’t have the infrastructures, the
electricity blink just one seconds throughout, you know things like that but
more importantly it is a joy once in a while to be among global creative
community and to be accepted, you know as having contributed something and
having been deemed qualified to judge other peoples work.
From all this you have said it sounds
like there was no participation of Nollywood?
I think there is a short film from
Nollywood from one of the Nigerian young filmmakers, but in other categories I
don’t think Nigeria
film participated, especially in the Afro Asia category, but I remember we had Burkina Faso
and Senegal.
Would it be correct to say Nigerian
filmmakers are beginning to shoot high budget films, especially for cinemas and
thereby pushing DVD into extinction?
There is nobody shooting high budget
film because we are all shooting low project films. We had a visitor here
from America and when he asked for the budget of the film, I said it’s just to
spend something like a $150,000 and in truth most of all films we rarely spend
over million naira or N25million. And he said how was that possible, you know
he stays in America
and a low budget flick in the U.S.
is about $5million. So, I think we have relatively low budget because you
cannot say we want $150,000 movie and put it in the Dubai International Film Festival,
you will be almost out of place. So it is true that in Nigeria we are making
movies for the cinema because it’s the best most of us have seen, and in
distinction, video will be video and the people doing it will continue to be
the same and a lot of all those marketers are just trading so they are probably
not interested in making movie for the cinema but they want something to sell,
it will be a commodity on that level but people who aspire that their films are
shown on big screens will also have people who will come, sit down and pay
to watch the film. So, I don’t think there will come a time where the video
will disappear, it will never disappear because even in America, people are
making films straight to DVD release, so in some way, the main thrust of the
industry will be making films straight way to DVD or CD release and a few films
are released for the cinema.
You don’t seem to want to quit
anytime soon, how has the journey been?
How can I quit? You know this is
something that… whether we like it or not it’s an interesting and exciting
part. Film making is best for me, I have worked with almost all the known
technology for making motion picture, even when we changed to video, there are
so many variance of video, we started with analog, VHS, Digital cam, until we
get to the main digital era and even then that changing in technology made it
more exciting, every time we are doing something new, we are learning new
things, so we are going to learn forever, so when my time comes, I will drop
down and die and go away, but right now, I feel excited because I still have
the experience, I have the maturity, I have technology to make an image. We can
make it everyday because we have the tools, we can control the means of
production and we have within our power to control the means of production, so
it is a blessing to Africa that we have found
our voice and I can’t just stop singing, that’s the same with what have been
saying.
So, how has the journey been?
The journey has from day one been
challenging, though it has got to do with anything made in Nigeria, it is
very difficult and sometimes you start out and your success is not guaranteed,
I think we have all failed some of the time, but I think God and supporters
have kept us going.
Looking at the tough and difficult
approach in sourcing for funds for movies, how have you been able to sustain
your productions going by how you put your all into every single work?
It is certified that I put
everything I have in my movie, sometimes I have been supported by friends,
family and everybody. Let me give you an example, Maami has been seen
almost all over the country, but later I returned to location shooting more
scenes for Maami because I felt it’s not there yet, but with those
scenes, I was able to offload the complete visuals and that is how I respond to
every of my film. But if I didn’t put everything that I wanted to visualize, I
will be worried throughout my whole life, so I have to make sure that within
the available resources, within the opportunity that Nigeria itself gave me, I
must achieve to a very reasonable standard before I leave the industry.
Piracy is a big bug affecting the
Nigerian entertainment industry as a whole, how do you make your finances back?
It’s very difficult because when I
work, for instance since we started Mainframe Production from T’oluwa Nile,
they still sell in triples, I took the risk, they are all a risk because this
should have been my retirement plan, package and so on, but no, we have
forgotten about all that, just to make the film, so the thing is supposed to be
sort of a plan, but since piracy has reached this level in Nigeria we are all
threatened, we have not recovered from Arugba, certainly we didn’t
release Maami then and that means we didn’t have any work for the last
two years, and the pirates are more daring than ever before because we tried to
find out in December and the report is bad and it’s not possible to forfeit the
pirates because there is piracy all over the world, but the Nigerian pirates
are so disruptive and so wicked that there is no way you can compete with them
because they have sold the part of the pirated film so low that nobody can
survive on it. I think it is intentional, and I think the government isn’t
sensitive enough, the government doesn’t know the damage that they have done to
people in the industry, we are just making noise at the moment because the
truth is production companies are closing down, and some of those
marketers divert to other things.
So, if all this is happening, where
does your hope lie and why shoot more?
I have great poles, I think it is
about Africa and Nigeria, it’s about an emerging economic growth and I think
that it’s our turn in Africa to do it right and I believe that Nigeria has a
major role to play in the growth of the market and the premium. I am waiting for
that opportunity, so I’m not going to give up, beside it is not going to go on
like this forever, I don’t think Nigeria can afford seeing the country sliding
into anarchy, I think we are so important to be ignored by the whole world and
I think we are having some economic value, Nigeria is a special country and
everybody knows and the whole world knows, so if our government will not do it,
there will be intervention from outside, may be if they realize how hopeless
some of the obstacles to growth and development are, they will come and do it
for us, electricity power, yes they step in, I read that even the World Bank is
interested in working with the government to make sure that there is stable
electricity. Once there is electricity, then the small and medium enterprises
will boom, once they boom, then that’s the time for entertainment, even now,
new cinemas are going to be developed for the people and I’m part of the
movement to make sure that it happens, so when it happens I already have the
content, that’s why I believe that this is not the time to give up, this is the
time to really put on my trousers and get on with it.
It is generally believed that Kunle
Afolayan is fast taking after your footstep, how true is this?
Yes because he acknowledges me, he is
a young man, he acknowledged that I mentored him, first of all, he learnt a lot
about film making from his father and then when he decided that this is what he
was going to be doing, he came to me and I decided to mentor him, and I’m very
proud of him. When our film was presented in the last Africa 2012 in London, Maami was screened at 2 o’clock and Phone Swap followed
up at 5 o’clock. During the
question and answer time, Kunle called me up, telling everyone that there is
somebody here who mentored him and I said; ‘am proud of you,’ because he is not
the first person that is going to pass through me, but he is a success story
and he is rising fast, he is committed, he is focused, he is passionate about
the quality of his work, so what else can we ask for.
Cinematography, film making, how did
it become your passion?
No oh! When I was very young, I
didn’t know I was going to go into film and cinematography, but I started from
my primary school days, you know, I have always wanted to
be a photographer and through my secondary school I have had more
than five cameras, with a friend, we learnt to process our film, we knew how to
mix the chemical, we knew the chemistry of photography and we finally crashed
in on a photographer who had left during the civil war to go back home, we went
into his jack pile and took over, and we started to process our film, so that
was in secondary school. So, when I was leaving secondary school, it became
clear that I couldn’t do any other thing, but photography and look how photography
has involved in the present Nigeria today, there are now specializations,
fashion photography, but I took to motion picture because I was fascinated by
the cinema when I was young and I saw all the films that came into Lagos and
not only that, I also read lots of literature, I read for pleasure, so the
combination of this helped me.
How many adaptation have you made?
In fact, I think have done more
adaptation than mixture, if you can count from Ko se Gbe, Oleku, Thunder
Bolt, The Narrow Path, White handkerchief, Maami, then
the new one Dazzling Mirage those are the adaptation.
Why that love for adaptation of
books into movies?
That is simply because I read
everything, I have said that nobody can make a good thing without reading,
therefore I read all reading materials around, I read a lot, for me it is very
important because I have recognized the combination of literature and drama and
I have a million story to tell. Not only that, I love the books, I love the
authors too, I found the writers, I dogged them out, Kola Akinlade, Pa Amos
Tutuola, Cyprian Ekwensi, Akinwunmi Ishola, Adebayo Faleti, Wale and Ogunyemi,
I love to read books from Wole Soyinka, I have always been around writers.
So, you went straight to the
university to study film making or what?
I have never attended a university,
I thought I didn’t need that because I became an apprentice photographer when I
left secondary school, but later, when I joined television, I saw that the
things we are seeing on television is not the same as the American film I see
in the Cinema, that’s when I had to apply to the London Film School, so I have
a professional diploma in Art and Techniques of film making from London Film School,
that and my factual experience is the university.
What you have and what you can be
able to give is far more than that of people who have gone to the university.
I think in a different way, I think
we have all gone to the university irrespective of what our passion may be,
because if you look at our local drummers, who have spent about eight years
learning the technology and techniques of drumming and the language of the
drum, so is a language. And that means they have been through someone like
master, if they were graded by that particular system, I think that is what
they need because occasionally there is the aspect of the fetish and the theory
of dignity, which I did from the elementary part in the London School and
socialization was discouraged and people who read English, journalism coming
together in the class and we were expected to go through the same, so
inevitably, we learn film history, so occasionally I found myself invited to a
forum and ‘am the only one who is not speaking and ‘am the only one who is not
a PhD, sometimes I tell them not as view that I’m one of them, I’m not
one of you, really I’m a film maker in the practical area and you are theorists,
so deal with your area, it’s not my area.
How did you find time to say I need
a rest, I need to have fun?
What is the rest? What can you do
when you are resting? When you are resting that means perhaps you are lying on
your bed or so, but the film making is so natural and an extension of my body
that necessarily you have to read, so when I’m resting that means I’m reading,
so I’m already resting and most of the time, you study film. So, I’m already
watching movie and then some of the time when you go out to make a film, you
get critical in a sense, so I’m already exercising and then organizing and
taking part and arranging the performance and just sitting down and asking
people to do it for you, what more reward can you get? If someone who was not
used to making film is being asked, he would think we are spending the money
for fun, you know it could be a dance, music, DJ and all that, he will say this
people are just throwing my money away, but for me, the work is there, existing
and they have a lot of varieties in it. Of course occasionally you could go out
and say let’s go to location rekee or let’s go to Ghana and then they head up
to Ghana, but me, that’s again my vacation, because not only are you enjoying
yourself, but you are actually documenting some of the process that will give
birth to something that you valued and to the larger society.
Do you see yourself leaving these
for your children to continue?
You see that is interesting because
my kids are not interested and I like that. They know all about this, they grew
up in the studio, at least they spent 10 years of their life in the studio here
and just that they took part in one or two things and so on, but by the time
they got ready to leave for university, they didn’t want to start their life
thinking they want to be apprentice, they want to do greater things, when I was
young, I freed my mind for it too, it was an adventure as a young boy to tell
his father that I don’t want to go to university, actually I wanted to be an
apprentice as a photographer and that my father realized that yes this a
passion for something he has done and agreed, so that’s why I couldn’t directly
interfere and the children didn’t think this is what they want to do.
So, not even one has shown interest?
No, not necessarily, you know
because I think it’s a passion and the talent, if they don’t have the same
passion or passion that is greater than myself, it will be a mistake to push
them into it. I think children should identify what they love and their passion
and then be ready as a parent to sacrifice, to invest their time and money to
attain whatever they decided. So, I think the way mine evolved is more of an example;
it is not that I’m a businessman with an empire, it’s a creative thing, a
creative industry and if they found it, yes I would support it.
What informs your dress sense, it
has never changed from African?
It’s changing because I have
experimented it when I was young, I’ve experimented looking inward, for me, what
our fabrics colour commonly known like rainbow, so this again is expression for
me and at a time, I will experiment a particular fabrics and combination of
colours and how I’m going to use them, you know there are traditional style
which from time to time I’ve always experimented, that’s why I can’t own Agbada
because I thought, for me, it is too much, I don’t need it, it’s a waste of
materials, then I look at traditional Buba which is at the best, it’s just
putting a hole for your head and put in something for your hand. I am more
interested in that, and that is the problem because if all of us apply the
education, it will work, and we didn’t allow the colonial mentality to get to
us, we could have done a lot more to what we are doing and that would have
boosted the local economy, that’s why when people earn a living, things like
that, so if they don’t apply that in all areas of life, of course the society,
the economy will be more buoyant.
So, how would you describe the man
Tunde Kelani?
Very ordinary person! I’m just me,
there’s nothing more to it. I can’t be a king, a chief or anything, but I can
only be what I am, just a filmmaker.
And you are so content with it?
What do you want me to do? I don’t
think I have a problem with who or what I am or myself because there’s nothing
to it and my needs are minimum, material possession, food and anything, they
are just simply minimum.