Celebrated actor, movie producer and director, Kunle Afolayan has described as crucial the ability of any filmmaker in balancing the creative and business sides of movie-making, just as he reiterated the importance of being well trained and informed about the intricacies of the sector.

This formed part of the issues raised by Afolayan during the Toyin Falola Interview Series held via various social media platforms and streamed live to various audiences across the globe on Sunday, March 5, 2023. The interview panel was led by celebrated African historian, Professor Toyin Falola, (who was represented by Adepoju OIuwatoyin), Steve Ayorinde, Molara Wood, and Pelumi Folajimi. Wood is a writer, critic, speechwriter and journalist. She won the inaugural John La Rose Memorial Short Story Competition and received a Commonwealth Broadcasting Association award for her fiction. Ayorinde is an award-winning journalist, editor and publisher with a special interest in culture and film. Folajimi is a lecturer in the Department of Dramatic Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University.

While speaking on the influence his upbringing had on his career, Afolayan revealed that he went through as a young boy while helping his father who was also a film producer. “At this moment if anybody is made to go through what I went through, such act would be called child abuse. Sometimes I would stab school just because I had to follow the traveling theatre to as far as Cotonou, Lome, and Abidjan to screen my father’s films. That was how I learnt how to do ticketing and then publicity for films, and then operating the projector. At that time, the filmmaker is also the exhibitor, the producer, and others. I did all of these and that opened me up to learning and understanding the business side of filmmaking. Things have changed a little bit now but a lot of things still connect. Ticketing used to be manually done but now electronic. I learnt all of this unknowingly. That prepped me for my journey as well. When I started, I was doing the same things myself until the distribution options came where you do DVDs, VCDs. I started with taking the movies to schools, cinemas before the DSTV and the rest started buying our content.

“It is safe to say that up till now those things which I learnt then are still handy and very useful. Whenever I try to do something new, I ensure I create a balance. I have been able to balance the business and creative sides of filmmaking,” he said.

Speaking further, Afolayan noted that myths and unresolved metaphysical issues have always remained a fascination for him. According to him, “I have a mind that wonders a lot. There are many things in this world that are unclear to us. Several times, my mind asks a lot of questions. When I can’t find answers to those questions, I try to put it out there, expecting some clarity. We live in a world where religion seems to have messed up people’s minds. In Nigeria, if you are not a Christian or you don’t come out to claim you are a Muslim, then you cannot be anything else. I find this outrageous. I have played up albinism and what people with this condition are daily faced with. I have also played up the issue of reincarnation. I still see my father. I don’t know if it is reincarnation or not. In the last fifteen years, he appears in my dreams. We have conversations. Most of the conversations we have had have come to pass. Whether people believe it or not, it is the truth. In these dreams, I am conscious with the fact that he is no more and I would say to him that we should quickly wrap it up because he was no more. It still happens.”

He also described his attempts at using film as a platform at fostering Nigeria’s unity.  “I have proven my style and my ways and how I like to use film to unite the country and to also show people that film really doesn’t have a particular language. You can produce a film without dialogue and it would make sense. In this age and time, you can do a film in Ibibio and dub it in other languages or subtitles,” he said.

Celebrating his father’s legacy as a film producer, Afolayan noted that retrieving some of the classics from where they are being preserved is herculean. “All over the world, there are archives for classics. The films are so well preserved in a lot of countries. I know that there are funds now to restore a lot of films. I don’t know why we are not looking in that direction in Nigeria. We looked for some of these films and we found them in London. Since 2002, I have engaging the relevant laboratory to see how to get those movies out. They have the films of other Nigerian filmmakers, not only that of my father. I worked with a lady called Modupe in London who had been championing these things. She recently asked me on how to reach out to the estates of the people who own these things. I told that whenever I returned we would go back to the lab to find out what films we could bring out and then inform.

“The first time that I went in 2002, I went with Tunde Kilani. We have managed to get Ija Ominira, Kadara, and Taxi Driver (1 and 2). We have Iyaniwura and Ija Orogun there. We have been trying to get these films out but the problem in the last five years is the fact that some reels are missing. When they checked the storage, they couldn’t find some of the pictures but they have the sounds. We have been at it.

“I recently engaged an independent person who would go into the vault again in UK to search. Since we are in a digital age, we have also been paying in London to keep the raw files there. So those things are there forever. Because we now have digital version, it means that we can preserve them forever. Recently, my brothers and I found 16mm reels of Iyaniwura and Ija orogun, even though they were bad.

“We are doing everything possible to ensure that. I think other families of filmmakers should take such steps. I feel that I owe my father that much because I have benefitted from what he started,” he revealed.