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Any mention of ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’, ‘Fifty’ and other iconic movies with Biyi Bandele’s signature is sure to elicit an overture of cinematic excellence as movies that set a new standard in filmmaking.
Described by many as an intelligent writer and filmmaker who was not braggadocio with knowledge, Bandele comprehensively balanced the two different sides of his career, first as a writer and later as a filmmaker.
“The first time we met was at a British Council workshop for writers, and he was one of the facilitators they brought from the UK and some of us from Nigeria,” Adeniran Makinde, the Secretary General of the National Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts Practitioners, told Netng on Wednesday, August 10, 2022.
“The camaraderie, the openness, the quietness, yet very intelligent, his ability at receiving you is amazing. People are so opinionated that they push their opinions in your face. Biyi was not like that. We laughed over everything even if he is going to have a dissenting opinion.”
Before becoming a globally acclaimed filmmaker, Biyi Bandele tried his hands at filmmaking for many years but failed.
“I had been trying to make my debut as a filmmaker for quite a while, and it was almost impossible. Project after project didn’t see the light of day,” he told Arise TV.
His breakthrough finally came in 2013 with ‘Half of A Yellow Sun’, an adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s award-winning novel.
The project, which had a $8 million budget, earned him an impressive reputation as the first ever Nigerian director to make a movie with the biggest budget in Nigerian history.
A statement on Monday, August 8, 2022, by his daughter Temitayo Bandele announced his “sudden and unexpected death on Sunday, August 7 in Lagos.”
The family statement referred to Bandele as a “prodigiously talented writer and filmmaker”.
Born October 13, 1967, in Kafanchan, Kaduna state, Bandele, from Abeokuta, Ogun state, grew up speaking Yoruba, English, Hausa and Tiv. His father, Bandele Thomas, was part of a special force deployed to Burma to fight in World War II.
“Running off to fight in World War II was an act of rebellion for my dad because he had fallen out with his dad, my grandfather,” Bandele told Olatoun Williams of Borders – Africanist & Global Interview in 2018.
Bandele lost his father when he was 14 and his mother in 2002 after the birth of his daughter – Temitayo.
“My daughter was born in 2002. I phoned a family friend who lived in Jos. I asked her to go to Kafanchan to break the news of Temitayo’s birth to my mum. She got there to discover my mum had just died. I got the news that my mother had died three days after she was born,” he said.
Bandele said three things led him into writing: “Witnessing my father after the Burma campaign was a major factor. As I said, he was psychologically badly affected by the experience. He suffered from flashbacks and became violent. I remember my mother picking me up in the middle of the night once when I was a baby and saying, ‘He’s started again.
Let’s go to your grandmother’s.’ But when he was ok, my dad was a charmer and a great dancer! From the age of about six or seven, he regularly took me to the library. That was a major contributor to my development as a writer. I discovered magic in that library. And my dad was a great storyteller. That helped.”
In her tribute, Mo Abudu, the CEO of EbonyLife Studios, said, “Biyi had an eye for story, was always passionate about his work, and had a great love for Yoruba culture.”
After obtaining a degree in Drama from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Bandele worked in Lagos briefly and left Nigeria for the UK in 1990 after his unpublished play, Rain, won him the International Student Playscript competition of 1989 and a scholarship to London in 1990, where he became a freelance writer.
In the UK, where he lived with his family, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and wrote radio dramas and screenplays for TV.
Some of his works include Burma Boy, The Street, Marching for Fausa, The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond, Two Horsemen, Resurrections and Death Catches the Hunter, among many others.
Bandele said Burma Boy (published in 2007), a fictional account of African soldiers who fought in the World War, was written to help his daughter know about her grandfather.
“I looked at my daughter and saw that she wouldn’t know her grandparents on my side. Her grandfather, my dad, died when I was 14. I wanted her to know about them, so I decided to first write about her grandfather,” he said.
Makinde Adediran said, “I’ve read Burma Boy. I’ve watched some of the plays he adapted, like ‘Things Fall Apart’ when you read about those things that he did, it’s a reflection of character.”
During the Sani Abacha regime as Nigeria’s head of state (1993-1998), an era that has been adjudged as one of the darkest periods in Nigeria’s political history when writers were also seen as enemies of the state, Bandele, despite being a UK-based writer, also had a brush with the security operatives.
“During Abacha’s rule, Wole Soyinka was wanted dead or alive. He had to escape, so he jumped on a motorbike and found his way to the UK. Just before coming home one time, I saw Prof. He asked if I would visit a colleague of his and bring back a document for him. I agreed,” he told Olatoun Williams.
“The document was on a floppy disk. Someone must have tipped off airport security because they stopped me and took me to an underground room at the airport. There’s a whole network of underground passages in the airport. Because Wole Soyinka was a wanted man, I realised what I was doing, taking the document to him, was dangerous. I put the floppy disk in my shirt pocket deliberately – hiding it in plain sight. They searched me, put me through an x-ray machine. I had taken the floppy out of my shirt pocket and put it on the desk in front of me – again hiding it in plain sight. The security men interrogated me about Soyinka. I said, yes, I’d seen him. He had come to see my play at the Battersea Art Centre. When they asked what we discussed, I told them, ‘We discussed the play’. They eventually let me go with apologies, about half an hour before my flight was due to take off.”
Bandele wasn’t restricted to plays. He wrote poetry, radio plays, novels, theatre pieces and more. Beyond writing, he is also known for his movie adaptations. He said he took to filmmaking because he was unsatisfied with how some directors told his stories in movies.
On the advice of British filmmaker Danny Boyle, he transitioned from a playwright to a director.
“When I saw things being done the wrong way. I’d complain to Danny, who told me to stop complaining and go do it myself!” he said.
After spending more than four years trying to adapt Chinua Achebe’s ‘Girls at War,’ Bandele made his directorial debut with ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ in 2013. He said the movie earned him invites to 40 film festivals worldwide.
He followed the success of ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ with the third season of MTV drama series ‘Shuga’ and ‘Fifty’ by Mo Abudu in 2015. His recent work ‘Blood Sisters’, Netflix’s first Nigerian original series, which he co-directed with Kenneth Gyang, hit the top 10 in 30 countries in its first week.
His latest work – ‘Elesin Oba, The King’s Horseman’, an adaptation of Wole Soyinka’s play ‘Death and the King’s Horseman’ is billed for premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2022.
“His personality is all that I would forever remember. That’s why I look forward to watching his last work, Elesin Oba. I look forward to watching his interpretation,” Makinde told Netng.
Since Bandele’s death was announced on Monday, August 8, 2022, some of his colleagues and those who look up to him have been paying tributes.
Bandele’s ability to express his creativity without stifling others is one of the unique features some of his acquaintances who spoke to Netng commended about him.
Makinde said, “It is not about his competence at the job; it’s about his character as a person; his character is not in any way oppressive. Personality always reflects on your creativity. What I described reflects in his works. If you have read his play, the manner in which he marshalls his point reflects that.”
Aderemi Raji-Oyelade, a Professor of English and African Literatures and Creative Writing at the University of Ibadan, described Bandele as a highly talented director who worked his way up to get the recognition he deserves in the film industry.
“I met Biyi Bandele only once in London in 2005. He is highly talented; he has also worked hard to be named among some of the best film and stage directors of our time,” Raji-Oyelade told Netng.
Bandele, who made the UK his base since he moved to the country in 1990, won multiple awards for his work. In 1994, he won the London New Play Festival for his play “Two Horsemen”; in 1995, he won the Wingate Scholarship Award; in 2000, he won the BT Ethnic and Multicultural Media Award for Best Play, Oroonoko.
Although he kept information about his wife away from the public, Bandele is survived by two children, his son, Korede and daughter, Temitayo.
Like his words in a social media post on the new film ‘Elesin Oba, The King’s Horsemen’, death is just the beginning; his legacy would live on.
The post Biyi Bandele: The Writer Who Transitioned To Filmmaking To Tell His Stories Better appeared first on Nigerian Entertainment Today.
Source: TheNet
