By Lanre Oladele
Late Pa Francis Adetunji Oladele. Photo: Pulse
Francis Adetunji Oladele [1932 – 2015] the pioneer filmmaker worked in Nigeria first as a photographer and later as a photo-journalist with the Daily Times before traveling to the United States in 1955, where he studied photography at the New York Institute of Photography. He worked briefly with Technicolor (USA) before returning to Nigeria to work as the Pioneer African Head of the Film Unit of the then Western Nigeria Television (WNTV).
An adventurous arts promoter, Francis Oladele was dissatisfied with the strangle hold of government officialdom on the arts. His determination to express his innate artistic talent left him with no other option but to resign from the Western Nigeria Television, WNTV. He later established what has come to be known as Calpenny-Nigeria Films Limited, also with a pioneer status, on September 21, 1965. He complimented these efforts with the establishment of Kongi Club at Adamasingba in Ibadan, which became the rallying point for artistes, like Wole Soyinka, Dapo Adelugba, John Pepper Clark, as well as Tunji Oyelana, who actually honed his artistic stage performances as the Resident Artiste.
Apart from being a pioneer in the Nigerian feature film industry, Francis Oladele achieved another first for Nigeria by deciding to make films based on the work of successful and internationally acclaimed Nigerian writers. By indicating a creative preference for historical epics he also established for the Nigerian film industry the vital link between great literary works and film. This adaptation of novels into film not only assures future feature film-makers in Nigeria of a storehouse of material as manifested by the prolific output of Nigerian writers, but also serves as an inspiration for future writers who can now write with the wider and more immediate cinema audiences in mind.
Francis Oladele’s first film was …Read More
Source:: The NET
